Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[The Panther]

I am glad you brought this up, for I have been meaning to ask about that.

Does Zen's mods truly cut out the false horror spam? What is to prevent the Seraphs from still casting quickness followed by 4 false horrors anyway, even at 30- fatigue? The only difference I could see is that the AI will rarely cast any more horrors at the higher fatigue cost after the script ends. But they don't much cast horrors anyway, frequently preferring for whatever stupid reason to cast phantasimal warriors instead.

Has anyone tested this with the spell mod?

[alexti]

PDF said:
Alexti,
I agree with you, things change when global battlefields spells come into play - in my experience it's rather after turn 40 (but I'm in peaceful Old Europe, so maybe .. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif ).


RoS is Evo-7, FH is Alt-6, so they're not too far apart. If I have some Pythium/Arco/Caelum neighbour I'd prioritize RoS to have a counter if they attack me. In this case I'll have it much earlier than turn 40 (turn 25-30). If I have other enemies I may postpone this research.


PDF said:
But when this happens Caelum gets no special drawback - their mages won't survive RoS (does Mistform not protect ?), but neither will most other mages and troops : if Caelians have SG/IC/TC they won't be scratched.
Same goes for most global BF spells, once they're in summons are needed.


Mistform helps to some extent (if one has time to cast it). I'm not sure what "strong hit" is, but multiple RoS are still nasty. I haven't really tested it, but from past experience I'd guess that mage has 10-20% per RoS to get killed. And heavy troops are ok in RoS, so any army that primarily rely on heavy melee troops is reasonable safe from RoS, opponents won't probably cast RoS to kill couple of support mages and few units. In many ways Pythium and Arco are similar to Caelum. They all have deadly and easily dying mages.

[Zen]

Booyah!

[Chazar]

A)What was the reason behind keeping the 1 AirGem requirement for SummonAirElementals instead of nerfing the AirElementals themselves?

----------------

B)Another thing that bugs me is the Fire susceptibility of IceDevils. It is good to nerf IceDevils, but why by adding Fire susceptibility?

1. I think it is not very thematic: Considering water versus fire, I would always bet that water is the winner. Things might be somehwat different for ice versus fire, but the IceDevils are powerful water mages...

2. It makes them more symmetric to the arch devils. Symmetry might be good for balance, but it also defeats diversity. Diversity is one of Dom2 greatest features IMHO!

Do IceDevils already get increased and noticeable fatigue when fighting within hot lands (something symmetric to cold-bloodedness)? That would seem much more appropriate to me...

[Zen]

A.) Because Air Elementals are extremely exploitable in a Storm. They also have an armor piercing attack and can fly. Storms are already so exploitable, making them more so by chainsummoning would not 'diversify' the game. Once again catapulting Air magic to the forefront of synergestic spells.

B.) Because by adding a vulnerability it is quite a sacrifice to try to get full resists (thus making it a true SC). Ice Devils are already physically more powerful than Arch Devil's, have better buffs. I don't see why the 'diversity' is hurt by having them equally niche useful as an Arch Devil as far as resistances. In actuality you may still always choose a ID over a AD (if you have the option) because of the physical stats, but depending on who you are fighting it might have a counterweight.

a.) The protection that normal ID's lose even in Heat 3 Enviroment (outside of the ID that is especially sensitive to heat) is minor and acceptable when you can equip a Ring of Fire to null the Encumberance issue (which is the big issue with Cold Bloodedness).

My response might be misunderstanding. I can't fathom how having one unit with a different vulnerability to it's opposite element lessens the diversity in anything but equipping the Ice Devil. I can say in the stock game before the nerf, there was never a reason to pick an AD over an ID with the exception you couldn't gather up enough Air gems to make Boots of Flying. As it stands now if you will probably summon the ID's first but they won't be immediately invulnerable to 90% of the mages you meet with two items, instead it requires 3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Chazar]

First: I am sorry if you found my questions insulting, this was not intended, I was merely asking out of interest. I am a bit worried because I interpret your reply a bit harsh, but maybe you are just tired of defending your ideas... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif ...or maybe I am a bit tired and interpret you wrong. No worries in that case. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Second, I am not that satisfied with the answers:
A) Ok, you say that AirElementals might be too powerful. I do not disagree with you on that. So they could be balanced by changing their stats. You choose a different way by leaving them as they are, but making their Fire/Water/Earth counterparts more accessible. Fine and diversifying. I was just not sure why you preferred the one way over the other...

B) I assume it is less diversifying, since it adds more symmetry, and symmetry is order, and an ordered system is less diverse in the sense that chaos is diverse. Example: Changing Abysia by turning fire resistance into cold resistance, heat aura into cold aura, fire picks into water picks, cold preferrence instead of heat preferrence would not add much diversity to the game, IMHO. Sure there would be further differences, since not every fire item or fire spell has an ice or water counterpart, which is due to the broken symmetry (i.e. diversity) of spells and items.

This is also the case with the Elementals: FireElementals are susceptible to Cold, but WaterElementals are not susceptible to Fire, hence effectively countering the one versus the other needs slightly different tactics than just replacing a water mage with fire mage. I like that, since most other games would have them symmetric in susceptibility, but not in Dom2! Thus I was just wondering whether adding a fire suceptibility was the only way of establishing the balance (since I do agree that IDs where too strong in comparance), and whether you considered other ideas which were neglected in the end...

[Huzurdaddi]

Ok, you say that AirElementals might be too powerful. I do not disagree with you on that. So they could be balanced by changing their stats. You choose a different way by leaving them as they are, but making their Fire/Water/Earth counterparts more accessible. Fine and diversifying. I was just not sure why you preferred the one way over the other...




Have you tried using them? The other elementals move somewhat slowly and are somewhat difficult to get into the fray. Air elementals since they fly do not have this problem. This makes them wickedly easier to use. Try it out edit back the fatigue cost to 99 ( is that what Zen used? ) for air elementals and see what happens. I tried it out and they were amazingly effective.

The only way I could see to balance them with the other elementals would be to

a) make them almost 100% ineffective in combat
b) make them not fly and slow down their movement to be in line with other elementals.
c) keep the gem cost

To me ( b ) would probably have been the easiest solution ( assuming it is possible ) but it would have been horribly unthematic. So Zen went with ( c ) which sounds fine to me.

[Zen]

Chazar said:
First: I am sorry if you found my questions insulting, this was not intended, I was merely asking out of interest. I am a bit worried because I interpret your reply a bit harsh, but maybe you are just tired of defending your ideas... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif ...or maybe I am a bit tired and interpret you wrong. No worries in that case. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I don't think I was trying to be harsh, just quick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I haven't had alot of time to peruse the forum as of late and an actual feedback question in this thread is pretty uncommon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif So if it sounded harsh, I apologize and no you don't sound harsh to me.


Second, I am not that satisfied with the answers:
A) Ok, you say that AirElementals might be too powerful. I do not disagree with you on that. So they could be balanced by changing their stats. You choose a different way by leaving them as they are, but making their Fire/Water/Earth counterparts more accessible. Fine and diversifying. I was just not sure why you preferred the one way over the other...

This is an idea, but the only way to really do this would kill the theme of the Air Elemental AFAIK. I have thought about modifying the Air Elemental to not have flying, but it felt very wrong, I also modified their attack to be a "Force of Wind" like a air punch and I still ran into the same problem of having Storm Exploitable Air Elementals who then, had an unresistable normal attack. I'm sure I could come up with a way to sufficiently nueter the Air Elemental while allowing it to flying in Storms and gaining a bonus in storms but as of yet I haven't been able to find the time to wrangle it into place. Also I've had a slight issue with finding a proper balance for Communion, which I have fixed in the latest release of the Spellmod. Maybe I'll take the time over the next few days to design a new weapon/stats to fit.


B) I assume it is less diversifying, since it adds more symmetry, and symmetry is order, and an ordered system is less diverse in the sense that chaos is diverse. Example: Changing Abysia by turning fire resistance into cold resistance, heat aura into cold aura, fire picks into water picks, cold preferrence instead of heat preferrence would not add much diversity to the game, IMHO. Sure there would be further differences, since not every fire item or fire spell has an ice or water counterpart, which is due to the broken symmetry (i.e. diversity) of spells and items.

Possibly and I do see your point. However. If you take the case of the Ice Devil and break it down you have:

Lower Research
Super-Combatant Chassis
Lower Resources to Cast
Physically more Powerful than *any* other SC chassis except Lords of Hell and Possibly Air Queens.
Paths of Magic that provide a key component of a high end SC, Quickness/BoW the only other better path could concievably be Air.
One full Resistance (Cold) and no Vulnerabilities.

In balancing this unit you have to look first at what it provides for it's cost. Then you have to decide if there is an issue of this considered the "Best" or most efficent. If it is the "Best" or most efficent, is it limited or cost effective.

So based on this dynamic. The ID was nerfed to be in line with it's nearest counterpart, in-as-much if you had access to both spells, both were availiable and with the same amount of resources there would actually be a *choice* between the two instead of the logical decision being one.

Thus it was raised in Research (to stop the Rush), raised in Cost (for the choice) and given a vulnerability to counteract some of it's physically superior advantage over the Arch-Devil which in addition to it's own physically lower stats has a built in vulnerability. Forcing an ID to have a Fire Helmet, Charcoal Shield, or Hell Sword (common) is not actually much of a nerf in all actuality.


This is also the case with the Elementals: FireElementals are susceptible to Cold, but WaterElementals are not susceptible to Fire, hence effectively countering the one versus the other needs slightly different tactics than just replacing a water mage with fire mage. I like that, since most other games would have them symmetric in susceptibility, but not in Dom2!

Water Elementals are not susceptible to fire but Ice Elementals are. These are not Water Devils, but Ice Devils http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Thus I was just wondering whether adding a fire suceptibility was the only way of establishing the balance (since I do agree that IDs where too strong in comparance), and whether you considered other ideas which were neglected in the end...

The fire suceptibility was half thematic and half balance. There were other ideas, but none of them seemed to really fit and they 'nerfed' too much I felt. Resistances can be modified with Equipment thus are overcomable, whereas lowering HP is not. If you have what you consider a better idea for an Ice Devil, I'd be more than willing to hear it.

[st.patrik]

Zen, it seems to me like the change to Hama Dryads makes them very overpowered - True they are limited in how far they can range from home, but 20 of those gals guarding your fortress will make damn sure no-one comes close to taking it. I think a free 'enslave mind' is way too powerful.

apologies if anyone already mentioned this - I didn't read all 18 pages, but I did do a search, and didn't find anything on it.

[quantum_mechani]

st.patrik said:
Zen, it seems to me like the change to Hama Dryads makes them very overpowered - True they are limited in how far they can range from home, but 20 of those gals guarding your fortress will make damn sure no-one comes close to taking it. I think a free 'enslave mind' is way too powerful.

apologies if anyone already mentioned this - I didn't read all 18 pages, but I did do a search, and didn't find anything on it.


No, even now they are not near overpowered, considering you need a lab in each province you summon them, which usually means a fort anyway, which means they become mostly a Last ditch defense...

This would be negated if you could move them around with Fairy Trod, Astral Travel, ect., but every turn away from their home province they take severe damage.

[Edi]

The Enslave Mind attack has 5 shots, and the hama dryad is almost worse than useless without it for the reasons QM listed. The proper solution is to bring enough chaff to render them irrelevant.

It's not an insurmountable problem.

Edi

[Zen]

Mr. Patrick! I haven't heard much feedback about the Spellmod, however, I have heard that people thought this was perhaps too powerful. Though QM and Edi are quick to point out they don't seem so, I tend to agree. I would have rather not had them "Enslave Mind" but perhaps Charm, or confuse or something similiar but the effect is really what I'm looking for.

For the Hama to be strong enough in it's singular role that it is extremely useful for what it can do. This comes from the fact that the unit will die within 2 turns of being outside their home province. They *might* be a little too cost efficent, but I haven't yet run into a situation with too many hama dryads that I haven't been able to deal with them before.

Something of note: When you make the Hama's have a 0/2 movement you actually see the AI use them, apparently when they have movement the AI will move them around and unknowingly kill them.

[Edi]

As a note, I think the charm spell also has the Enslave Mind attack effect, just that the spell sound effect is different because it is specified in a different place maybe? The Enslave Mind attack (that units may have) uses the astral spell default sound, and the nature spell charm uses the nature spell default sound, but it still has the same attack effect (it must, because all damaging spells with special effects must have something for the effect) because there are no others. Unless the spells have a Category of those all on their own, but I doubt it.

Edi

[Zen]

It's at least slightly different. Since when you Charm a commander they keep their Commander status while if you Enslave Mind a Commander they are regulated to a Unit regardless of their previous status.

Hellbind Heart falls into this same Category.

It doesn't in actuality matter very much, I would love to be able to change the Enslave's Penetration bonus/penalty but that is doable with the current Mod tools. Same with Mind BLast.

So Edi, any feedback from you, O' Editor?

[Edi]

Haven't had time to actually try the spell mod out, I'm just assessing the differences based on what I know of the abilities, costs and effects that the modifications affect and drawing educated guesses.

I've been much too busy producing other documentation, like the completely revised, rechecked, expanded and more accurate magic site list that will be made available for public consumption tomorrow (as will an updated unit DB, though the modifications to that are pretty minor in comparison). And doing non-Dom2 related things. But I'm actually starting a couple of SP games to try out the spell mod. I should also update the Faerun map files (assign VPs to some places, correct at least one border error that slipped through and recheck a couple of other things), but that will take a couple of days.

Edi

[deccan]

Does Enslave Mind have a better inherent MR penetration than Charm? How about Hellbind Heart?

[Gandalf Parker]

Zen said:
It's at least slightly different. Since when you Charm a commander they keep their Commander status while if you Enslave Mind a Commander they are regulated to a Unit regardless of their previous status.

Hellbind Heart falls into this same Category.

It doesn't in actuality matter very much, I would love to be able to change the Enslave's Penetration bonus/penalty but that is doable with the current Mod tools. Same with Mind BLast.

So Edi, any feedback from you, O' Editor?



Im not sure if I read that right. Unless something changed then hellbind has no effect other than them switching sides. Ive gotten my best commanders, mages, equipment, and even multiple prophets with hellbind.

I also love the "double damage" thing. Not only have I gained powerful commanders with experience and equipment, but he has lost the same. His advancing army now has many units with no leader which cannot advance and will rout if even a scout attacks.

[Zen]

This means:

Charm = Hellbind Heart (You get commanders as commanders)

Enslave Mind, Master Enslave, turn commanders into units when they switch sides.

For Penetration: It's the same across the board except for the Enslave Mind Weapon, which has less penetration (I believe). Though of course the added penetration of exceeded Paths is different (Hellbind having the most potential Penetration with the same number of paths).

[st.patrik]

What about making the enslave mind have a very high fatigue cost, or something like that?

Just to explain why I thought it was overpowered - I played a game vs. AI as Arco, and was attacked on several occasions by small Groups involving 5 Hama Dryads. I had a much larger force, but ended all such engagements losing most of my guys without killing a single one of the enemy. I agree that it would be hard to use this strategically, with the need to build labs etc., so what I am more concerned with is the defensive effect of having, say 10, dryads guarding each of your fortresses. stick in a couple of heavies to jam the doorway and your fortress is never going to fall - especially if you throw in a staff of storms to make sure flyers can't get in.
Also a handful of hama dryads would be worth sacrificing when used offensively, if they are basically able to take out your enemy's army (and probably win you some new troops (worth more than the summoning cost of the dryads themselves) in the process.

What about instead of giving them a ranged attack you just made them a lot tougher in combat - higher defense score, perhaps a life-drain melee attack, or something like that?

Other than this detail I like a lot of what you've done Zen. Have the devs tried this stuff out, does anyone know?

[Cainehill]

IMO, higher defense score, life drain melee, etc, wouldn't make anyone go for hamadryads. And, I don't think any form of life drain would be particularly thematic, whereas a charm attack _is_ very thematic for dryads.

[archaeolept]

yah. charm is best. if you could put the real spell in, w/ maybe 3 shots, that would be the best possibility.

[Graeme Dice]

I'd like to make the suggestion that you might want to take another look at the pretenders available to the aquatic nations and see if you couldn't figure out something to make them a bit more interesting. They really seem to be lacking an effective monster type, as the Kraken is nowhere near as fearsome as the new dragons. The wyrm is a possibility, but he's not that unique.

[Zen]

There are new Versions of the Pretender and Spell Mods availiable here:

www.techno-mage.com/~zen/ (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/)

Pretender Changes:

Lord of Fertility +100 PR
Lord of the Gates +5 Fear
Saurolich -1 Death, +1 Fire
Dracolich Basecost: 125, -Recuperation, +Immortality, +5 Prot
Dracolich (Bog Mummy) -Recuperation, +Immortality
Asynja -Recuperation
Lord of the Desert Sun +3 Berserk, Basecost: 110
Father of Serpents Basecost: 110, +Venomous Fangs (Deadly Poison)
Jade Emperor +7 Prot
Son of the Sea Basecost: 100, -1 Water, +1 Earth
Neried Basecost: 50


Spellmod Changes:

Too numerous list. I'll be sending the changes to Edi to modify the Readme that will be included more than likely on the webpage as well.

Also. I have a beta of the Scalemod, without the proper graphics to make it complete. If anyone would like to offer to make a few graphics for the Luck units, I would appreciate it since I haven't had alot of time to make sprites (mostly attack sprites).

[Edi]

Zen, is this list for pretenders complete? I don't see recuperation for Asynja or either Dracolich form in 1.81, and I'm not sure if the poison cloud was removed from the father of serpents, but I think I saw something to that effect earlier.

Could you confirm that? I'd like the 1.9 readme to be as complete and accurate as possible.

Edi

[Edi]

I just went through the mod file with a fine tooth comb, which answered my questions, so no need to bother with that.

You have, however, made one mistake: You say the Nerid's cost should be 50, but it has in fact been changed to 75 in v1.9. Which one do you intend? I don't think adding the mounted status justifies a 50% increase in cost (Nerid's unmodded base cost is 50), so you should just leave it as is.

You should also add the word "Mod" into the mod description so that it will say "This is a Conceptual Balance Mod for..." instead of "This is a Conceptual Balance for...". And add the second dash into the comment line which identifies the pretender being modified as the Great Sage (the normal one, not the dragon alternate form).

If you email me a list of the spell changes, I can do the readme for that one, or I can just go through the mod files and see what has changed and go from there. I won't be able to produce the readme until tomorrow, and it might not be ready before Tuesday.

Edi

[Alneyan]

While speaking of typos:

- In Pretenders/Spells mod descriptions, independently is spelt "independantly", and its is spelt "it's" in "its own particular niche use".
- In the description for the Son of the Sun, its is spelt "it's" in "The sun has gifted its heir". The same goes for the Oracle: "in its Dominion [...] Within its sacred waters"
- I do not know whether this bothers you or not, as Illwinter's descriptions do the same, but season is used to describe a turn, while a season Lasts three turns (Early Summer, Summer, and Late Summer for example).

I like the changes you have made to Pretenders, but do not have any actual comment (I have not delved much into the Spell mod yet).

[Foom]

The new fanatics are much more useful than the militia you used to get in special events, but I noticed that they also replace independent militia and Pythium's PD troops. Not sure if this makes a big difference balance wise, but it probably wasn't intended.

Wish I could give some feedback on the balancing, but I'm not enough of an authority to do so.

[archaeolept]

they also replace one of the types of indy militia, which can make for an exciting battle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

the pyth pd effect should proably be changed. hastati would improve the crappiness of their pd w/out going overboard.

also, zen if you wouldn't mind could you edit the first post of the thread so that the link goes to the mod page? (at the moment it attempts to download the no longer available original Version).

and it should be in the links sticky as well.

thanks.

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. Latest Version of all three mods, the zip file isn't containing a ReadMe anymore.

About the Scale Mod, I'm not sure what the default numbers are, so I'm thinking that Turmoil's income drop is reduced, while sloth / death / misfortune's ill effects have been increased? I'm guessing this is the case, as it makes the common Order/Sloth/Death/Misfortune combo less appealing.

[Edi]

That's because I've been busy with other things and haven't managed to do the readmes yet. Zen has not given me any info on the scale mod, I haven't seen anything regarding the new spell mod either despite his comment about emailing me about it, and the pretender readme is about ready, I went through that and the previous Version line by line to see what had changed and to make sure that the readme will be correct.

I'd rather not do the same for the spell mod, the changes are far more extensive, and I'm not sure if Zen has kept the formatting the same instead of putting all modified creatures, weapons etc into the appropriate sections. I'll see about getting it done, but no promises on the schedule.

Edi

[PvK]

Just curious - Is there still no public documentation for the magic item cost/requirements modding?

PvK

[Edi]

Afaik, no. It should be forthcoming as soon as IW gets around to doing it (might be as early as patch 2.15, might not) and/or the modding beta testers (e.g. Psitticine, who did one of the earlier modding manuals, the one with the incomplete weapon list) get around to producing some.

Edi

[Cainehill]

Foom said:
The new fanatics are much more useful than the militia you used to get in special events, but I noticed that they also replace independent militia and Pythium's PD troops. Not sure if this makes a big difference balance wise, but it probably wasn't intended.




And it also replaces one of Man's recruitable militia units, giving Man somewhat of a boost (since the resource cost is high) but really boosting Pythium's PD pretty massively.

I'm guessing this is caused by the militia event having a hard-coded unit type/ID, so the only way to modify it was to change that specific unit type, with the ensuing ramifications to indies, Man, and Pythium.

[Cohen]

Magic Duel not magic duelling ...

Often the AI consider a waste to spend 1 magic pearl to deal with 1 enemy ... and refuse to.
Even if the enemy is the pretender alone and your best way to kill him is to magic duel it.

It happened that mages with an advantage of +2 or better (I tried til +4 difference beetween my and enemy astral mage) to refuse to cast magic duel, and indeed cast other crappy thing, ending in my defeat.

[Taqwus]

I think there might be a typo with the Ageless Treelord; like the Vengeful Treelord, he gets nature gems and blood slaves instead of nature gems and earth gems (the latter being what his description suggests).

Intriguing mods. Eliminating Gift of Reason breaks a lot of cheese (and strongly differentiates Enslavement and Charming/Hellbinding), and eliminating Wish makes it a lot less interesting to horde clams. Like 'em so far.

[Endoperez]

It is possible to change province defence of Pythium and recruitables of Man, so that they won't get the boosted militia. However, I haven't tested Zen's mods, so I don't know excatly what he has done.

[Zen]

New Versions of the Mods availiable for testing.

[Beorne]

Much thanks to Zen for the effort!

Only a little question: is there somewhere a readme with the changes?

[Edi]

Not yet. There is no readme for the previous spellmod, and the pretender readme while done is not yet published. I've had other stuff to do so they got on backburner, and I haven't had any word from Zen. I'll see about trying to get them done (for all Versions). Must wait till next week, though, so you won't see anything for a few days.

Edi

[Zen]

Alright. I have a little time so I will put forth the ugly readme for everyone. I apologize I have been busy.

ScalesMod 1.1

First. The scalemod. The Stock are the unmodified values and Mod are the modified values replacing the stock. Rareevents is the likelyhood of the higher caliber of Luck events (Random Events are divided into two types, common and rare) per event.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Scale Stock Mod

Order/Turmoil Gold 7% Gold 6%
Productivity/Sloth Gold 2% Gold 4%
Resources 10% Resources 15%
Heat/Cold Gold 5% Gold 7%
Growth/Death Gold 2% Gold 4%
Population .02% Population .03%
Luck/Misfortune Event 10% Event 13%
RareEvent 15% RareEvent 20%</pre><hr />

[Zen]

These are the following changes to the Pretenders v2.0

There are some things which are limited by the Modding Tools availiable for Illwinter. One of which is a redistricting of Pretenders, along with other statistical, auto-summoning, battle-summoning, certain unit modifications, global modifications and others. The Conceptual Balance series is my concept of Balance of the Game to allow *everything* to be a viable and game mechanical worthy choice not specifically for theme. While there is no "best" there are certain Pretenders with certain nations better suited to various strategies. With this in mind, here are the changes.

** denote changes from the Last Version

Weapons (weapon nbr / weapon name / changes)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(61) Fire Breath +1 AOE
(62) Bile +2 AOE
(254) Plague Breath +1 Ammo +1 AOE
(4) Lance +1 Length
(357) Light Lance +1 Length

New Weapons:
(999) Wing Buffet dmg -5, att 0, def 1, length 5, aoe 1 (flail, bonus)
(998) Roar dmg -5, att 0, def 0, length 5, aoe 1 (flail, bonus)

Pretenders (monster nbr / monster name / changes)

Monster:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(973) Ancient Kraken +50 PR, +50 CR
(779) Divine Serpent Pathcost: 30
(265) Dragon (blue) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(266) Dragon (green) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(216) Dragon (red) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(226) Great Sage (r. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, **+Mountain Survival, +Wasteland Survival
(267) Frost Father (b. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Sailing, **+Mountain Survival
(268) Master Druid (g. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, **+Swamp Survival
(644) Dracolich **Basecost: 150, +8 Prot, +4 Prec, +Immortal, +Wing Buffet
(645) Bog Mummy **+25 FR, +Immortal
(Dracolich 2nd shape)
(462) Manticore +8 Prot, +2 Att, +2 Def, +Wing Buffet
(294) Nerid Basecost: 75, +Mounted
(608) Phoenix +Fire
(334) Golden Naga Basecost: 90, -2 Enc, +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominion: 2
(157) Naga Basecost: 90, -2 Enc, +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominion: 2, Stealth 0
(655) Scorpion King +Mounted, +Body Slot
(661) Shedu +2 Def, -2 Enc, +Wing Buffet, +Earth
(978) Great Black Bull Pathcost: 60, -2 Enc
(979) Great White Bull Pathcost: 60, -2 Enc
(269) Wyrm Basecost: 50, +4 Def

(138) Medusa +4 HP
(383) Prince of Death +100 CR, +100 PR
(215) Virtue +Astral, -Air


Giant:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(501) All-Father Pathcost: 50
(955) Asynja Basecost: 100, -2 Air, +Astral, +Nature, +Glamour, +Stealth 25
(156) Cyclops **+20% Forge Bonus
(109) Dagon +6 Def
(385) Daughter of the Land Basecost: 75, +Earth
(606) Great Mother -1 Enc
(603) Father of Serpents +3 Def, +2 Prec, Poison Cloud: 6
(858) Jade Emperor -1 Enc, +2 Prec
(964) Lord of Fertility +Awe +2, +Nature
(957) Lord of the Desert Sun +3 Def, +2 Prec, +Roar
(388) Lord of the Gates **Basecost: 75, +Fear, +Astral
(604) Lord of the Night Basecost: 125
(812) Lord of the Wild Basecost: 125
(387) Mother of Lions +3 Def, +Stealth 0, +Roar, +Nature
(961) Son of the Sea **Basecost: 100, -Water, +Earth, +Mapmove
(386) Son of the Sun (red) +2 Fire Gems
(384) Son of the Sun (white) Basecost: 75, +Fire
(602) Titan (Male) Basecost: 110, +1 Att, +1 Def, +1 Prec, +Mountain Survival, +Mapmove
(600) Titan (Female) +Nature
(652) Void Lord -Head Slot, Dominion: 3


Immobile:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(958) Colossal Head +Nature, +Blood
(1025) Divine Glyph Basecost: 75, +Immortal
(656) Fountain of Blood Pathcost: 30, +10 HP, +3 Blood Slaves
(158) Oracle Pathcost: 30, +10 HP, +2 Astral Gems
(657) Monolith +2 Nature Gems
(472) Sacred Statue Basecost: 30, Pathcost: 20, -Astral,


Human (rainbow):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(401) ***** Queen +5 Prec, +Stealth 0
(402) Crone (BQ 2nd shape) -3 Enc, +3 Prec
(246) Freak Lord +11 HP, -2 Enc, +Nature
(245) Arch Druid +11 HP, -2 Enc
(248) Arch Mage (Water) +11 HP, -2 Enc
(244) Arch Mage Basecost: 25, +11 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 2
(509) Arch Seraph Basecost: 50, +8 HP
(249) Crone = Hag Basecost: 25, +6 HP, -2 Enc, +3 Prec, +Iron Crutch
(250) Frost Father
= Rime Mariner Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Sailing
(270) Master Druid Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Swamp Survival
(251) Great Sage Basecost: 25, +8 HP, -2 Enc
(485) Great Enchantress Basecost: 45, +7 HP, -2 Enc, +Ethereal
(873) Great Seer of the Deeps Basecost: 45, +9 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 2, +Water
(486) Great Warlock -2 Enc, Dominion: 2, +Quarterstaff, +Fire
(550) Master Alchemist +9 HP, -2 Enc, +2 Prec, +Earth
(857) Smoking Mirror +5 HP, -2 Enc
(858) Smoking Mirror (Jaguar) +16 HP, -1 Enc, +7 Prec, +13 MR
(500) Skratti = Elder Skratti -1 Enc, +1 Att, +3 Def, +Blood
(653) Serpent King **+8 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 3
(654) Serpent King (Serpent) +16 HP, -2 Enc, +3 Def, +2 Prec
(874) Divine Emperor -2 Enc, Dominion: 3


(872) Ghost King Basecost: 110, Pathcost: 30
(180) Master Lich = Arch Lich **+1 Death Gems, +Disease Cloud 6
(179) Lich +50 FR
(395) Lich Queen +50 FR
(320) Saurolich +50 FR
(643) Bog Mummy +25 FR



Unedited Pretenders:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(607) Baphomet
(1026) Carrion Dragon
(601) Lady of Fortune
(120) Moloch
(956) Mother of Tuathas
(499) Nataraja
(605) Son of Niefel
(159) Sphinx
(862) Vampire Queen
(546) Void Lurker

[Edi]

Comprehensive readme files for Spell mods 1.6 and 1.7 and Pretender mods 1.9 and 2.0 will be made available tomorrow. Right now it's too bloody late (0:45 am) and my gf will kill me if I don't shut the computer down very soon, is why the delay.

The readme's will have a major change of format in that everything will be displayed with the current modded values followed by original values in parentheses, instead of the previously used +/- x without reference to original value. I got too bloody tired referencing my own weapons and unit databases every time there was some minor change, and it will make the readmes more user friendly.

Edi

[Cainehill]

From the game this Sunday, it seems that the current elemental summoning spells may need tweaking - several of us thought that putting a gem requirement back might be good, because it's currently possible to really spam elementals. True, not with most national mages (albeit Atlantis, Abysia, Caelum, etc could manage it on a limitted scale) but a pretender going for a 9 or 10 bless winds up being able to churn out elementals every cast with almost no fatigue loss to limit it. Likewise, the elemental royalty and arch devils could spam elementals almost unlimittedly with a couple of boosters.

And, since the AI prefers to summon things more than almost anything else, it tends to continue to pump elementals after the script has run out.

Just seems a little unbalanced, watching a Moloch spew forth 15 or more full size fire elementals with his fatigue staying about 20 or 30. Said Moloch had a small army with him, but with just a dozen Mictlanish slaves would probably have slowed down 130 carrion creatures (or most other armies) long enough for the torrent of elementals to wipe out the opposing army.

[odd_enuf]

actually caelum can't spam elementals, air ones still need gems, but you don't even need a level 9 bless to spam elementals, an earth 6 or 7 cyclops can cast summon earth power and keep the elementals coming the entire battle. I would recomend upping the fatige cost to 100-200, a very high level bless could still spam for a while, but would eventually run out.

odd_enuf

[Jurri]

100+ fatigue cost will then add a gem to the cost, so...

[Crash]

I had heard that the fatigue cost was set low to keep communions from killing themselves off with elementals after script ran out.

Adding a gem would solve spamming, but result may be that that spell is just never used.

What about raising path by one, and raising fatigue from 40 to 60? Would that make the spell still used/usable, but not overpowered or deadly to communions?

[Cainehill]

Well, the original elemental spells mostly took 2 gems; if they were 1 gem apiece they might be used....

I think the problem may be that if a communion can effectively use the spell, an uber mage (pretender, elemental king, etc) can spam it....

[Crash]

You have a good point.

Would modding the elementals themselves to make them a bit weaker be a solution?

[Edi]

All right, here are the readme files for the following mods:
CB Spells 1.6 and 1.7
CB Pretenders 1.9 and 2.01

If you're wondering about the 2.01 Version designation, it's because I fixed a couple of minor typos in the mod file and rearranged the pretenders to the same order they are listed in the readme so that future readme updates won't be such a goddamn fukking pain in the arse. The 2.01 Pretender mod is naturally included in the package. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Edi

[Edi]

Crash, I think the best solution would be to up the fatigue cost for the elemental summoning spells to around 90 to limit spamming (you could still spam if you had relief casters or bards when playing Man, but it would mitigate the problem somewhat. Adding a gem requirement for the full elementals would work, but I suspect the result would just be a lesser elemental spam.

Edi

[jeffr]

Edi, great work on the readme!

And of course, thanks to Zen, as well.

thanks for including the original value. It really helps in determining how much something was strengthened/weakened.

[jeffr]

Zen said:
ScalesMod 1.1

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Scale Stock Mod

Order/Turmoil Gold 7% Gold 6%
Productivity/Sloth Gold 2% Gold 4%
Resources 10% Resources 15%
Heat/Cold Gold 5% Gold 7%
Growth/Death Gold 2% Gold 4%
Population .02% Population .03%
Luck/Misfortune Event 10% Event 13%
RareEvent 15% RareEvent 20%</pre><hr />



Doesn't Order/Turmoil currently have some effect on the Event frequency?

[Turin]

Growth seems to be far better compared to order.

I ran a test game, where I gave one god order 1 and the other growth 1, order started with 166 income growth with 163. I just ended the turns after checking incomes.
After the second turn growth income jumped to 165 and after the 6th turn he was already at 167.

I suggest removing the extra 2% gold bonus growth gets, it is already a very worthwile scale withe the increased population growth effect.

[Edi]

jeffr said:
Edi, great work on the readme!

And of course, thanks to Zen, as well.

thanks for including the original value. It really helps in determining how much something was strengthened/weakened.


It was the only smart way to do it, my mistake that I didn't do so earlier. This way I won't have to refer back to my other documentation to see the actual effects. Thanks for your compliments. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Edi

[Ivan Pedroso]

Turin said:
Growth seems to be far better compared to order.

I ran a test game, where I gave one god order 1 and the other growth 1, order started with 166 income growth with 163. I just ended the turns after checking incomes.
After the second turn growth income jumped to 165 and after the 6th turn he was already at 167.

I suggest removing the extra 2% gold bonus growth gets, it is already a very worthwile scale withe the increased population growth effect.



Nevermind the following - it's wrong http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Couldn't help doing a bit of algebra:

Income from province with Order+1 (on the N'th turn):
population / 200 * 1,06

Accumulated income with Order+1:
population / 200 * 1,06 * N

Income from province with Growth+1 (on the N'th turn):
population / 200 * 1,04 * 1,0003^N

Accumulated income with Growth+1:
population / 200 * 1,04 * Sum(i=1 to N of)[1,0003^ i]

The Last term in the above is a geometric series which adds up to:
Sum(i=1 to N of)[1,0003^ i] = (1 - 1,0003^(N+1))/(1 - 1,0003) - 1
Sum(bla bla)[bla bla bla] = (1,0003^(N+1) - 1) / 0,0003

Equating the two different accumulated incomes (Order+1 = Growth+1) gives:
1,06 * N = 1,04 * (1,0003^(N+1) - 1) / 0,0003

Here are the values of the left- and right-hand sides of this equation for some values of N:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
N Left(Order+1) Right(Growth+1)
1 1,06000 1,040312
50 53,00000 52,399756
100 106,00000 105,591314
125 132,50000 132,487750
126 133,56000 133,567808
</pre><hr />

All this (crap http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) just to say that in terms of income Growth+1 overtakes Order+1 after 125 turns. If you choose +3, Growth will ovetake Order at turn 115.

[DeathDaemon]

This mod is getting better and better! Thanks guys!

Edi, couple typos in readme:
-check the treelords' magic paths
(621) Treelord -&gt; Vengeful Treelord
(980) Treelord -&gt; Ageless Treelord

-missing parenthesis
(925) Tarrasque

[Edi]

Indeed, thanks. Looks like I'd mistakenly put E2 for the Vengeful Treelord when it was supposed to be B2. Just for the record, Zen's spell mod switches around the treelord magics so that the one that used to have earth now has blood and vice versa, which accounts for some of the strangeness.

I'll fix the typos for the readme for the next Version.

Edi

[Turin]

Ivan Pedroso said:

lots of math sutff here http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

All this (crap http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) just to say that in terms of income Growth+1 overtakes Order+1 after 125 turns. If you choose +3, Growth will ovetake Order at turn 115.



playtesting suggests that you have 1 zero too many, growth rate is 1,003 not 1,0003.
Secondly you have to factor in the administration bonus from castles, which incresaes with growth. If you do the test game you will see that growth´s income in a province with a watchtower will overtake order after turn 6 or 7. And after turn 10-11 the total accumulated income will be better than order´s.
Now growth has several other nice side effects(like better resource income, convenient bloodhunting/patrolling)
and that makes growth a nobrainer compared to order with that mod.

[atul]

Turin said:
playtesting suggests that you have 1 zero too many, growth rate is 1,003 not 1,0003.



Indeed, it would appear a province with 30 000 pop and growth3 dominion has an increase of 270 pop per turn - so growth would raise pop by 0.3% per scale. From the comments above, I assume it was meant to be only 0.03% increase per scale?

[ckfnpku]

I like (the idea of) the scales in the faeron test mod used in some of Soapyfrogs games. I haven't played 3 turns with them yet, so I don't know how balanced they are, but they seem to keep the flavor of the scales more, rather than mostly smudging the lines in the income department.

Those scales are:
order - effect on event freq is 3%
prod - 3% income, 25% resources
growth - 0.5% pop, 30% supply
luck - 15% event freq, 15% event good or bad

#turmoilevents 3

#deathsupply 30
#deathdeath 5

#slothincome 3
#slothresources 25

#misfortune 15
#luckevents 15

[Alneyan]

The basic growth value was 0.2%, and so I believe the .02% and .03% were typos. It has been increased to make Growth more worthwhile and, above all, to make Death a less appealing choice.

[Ivan Pedroso]

atul said:

Turin said:
playtesting suggests that you have 1 zero too many, growth rate is 1,003 not 1,0003.



Indeed, it would appear a province with 30 000 pop and growth3 dominion has an increase of 270 pop per turn - so growth would raise pop by 0.3% per scale. From the comments above, I assume it was meant to be only 0.03% increase per scale?



Yeah I used 1,0003 because Zen stated above that the growth rate was .03% - If he meant .3% then it should be 1,003. And also I wasn't aware of the admin/growth issue, I just thought that other castle stuff would be identical in the two situations. As is(almost) always the case, actual experiments beat dry calculations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

@Turin: Could you tell me the connection between admin and growth ? (Is it in Liga's addendum ? or ?). And even without the added benefits of growth that you pointed out, I agree, that growth over order seems to be a no-brainer.

[Graeme Dice]

Turin said:
and that makes growth a nobrainer compared to order with that mod.



Unlike Growth, Order still effects event frequency, so it's not quite as clearcut as you suggest.

[Huzurdaddi]

I like (the idea of) the scales in the faeron test mod used in some of Soapyfrogs games. I haven't played 3 turns with them yet, so I don't know how balanced they are, but they seem to keep the flavor of the scales more, rather than mostly smudging the lines in the income department.




The only one of those that I would change if I could go back in time would be

#deathsupply 30

the modifier is simply too high.

[Turin]

Ivan Pedroso said:
[
@Turin: Could you tell me the connection between admin and growth ? (Is it in Liga's addendum ? or ?). And even without the added benefits of growth that you pointed out, I agree, that growth over order seems to be a no-brainer.



Well my calculations suggest that it is admin value/2 added as a multiplier. So with growth 3 and a watchtower you get pop/200 *(1,12 (growth multiplicator) + 0,05(admin multiplicator) )

[Turin]

Graeme Dice said:

Turin said:
and that makes growth a nobrainer compared to order with that mod.



Unlike Growth, Order still effects event frequency, so it's not quite as clearcut as you suggest.



well with the changed luck scale that´s not necessarily a benefit and I even forgot the supply bonus growth gets you.

[Zen]

Growth is a no brainer over Order?

Hrm. Actually with the adjusted scales getting points feels a little harder to accomplish. So, with Order you can safely take Misfortune 2 without as much detriment. Taking Growth not only limits your points because you no longer take Death. If you are playing outrageously large maps with Turns in the 100+ (or you give up because the micromanagment kills you) Growth will look very appealing, while if you are playing anything under 50 turns, Death is not quite so appealing because of the Gold hit.

Also the choice between Growth and Production is significant unless you Subscribe to the "National Armies are crap at all times and I am making a bunch of clams and bloodstones and whatever to remain competitive" strategy, then of course you might want to always choose Growth over Production.

[Turin]

Ok if you factor in free misfortune 2 points, then it makes sense to take order, however growth is by far the best choice if you are looking for huge amounts of cash.

For example if you play with growth3 order3 productivity 3 and a watchtower, your income will be ~50% higher after 30 turns, than someone´s who chooses only order 3 productivity3 .

[Zen]

Turin said:
Ok if you factor in free misfortune 2 points, then it makes sense to take order, however growth is by far the best choice if you are looking for huge amounts of cash.

For example if you play with growth3 order3 productivity 3 and a watchtower, your income will be ~50% higher after 30 turns, than someone´s who chooses only order 3 productivity3 .



Unless those 120 Points you spent on Growth allowed you to expand ~50% faster or take Indeps of a greater caliber.

Growth only surpasses Order after turn 25 *if* there are no population damaging events or spells tossed into the mix. Even one population damaging event/spell in the first 20 turns will push that back quite a bit.

I have always felt that it's important that all points have an impact on both your strategy as well as the timeframe you are playing in. And as such, I can see where I would still take Death not only in timeframe (under 50 turn games) but also in strategy as well as Growth. Previously I (and only me) felt there was no need to take Growth for any of it's effects (Population/Gold/Supply). Now it may be possible to circumvent one scale with two others (Turmoil).

If it can be shown that Growth outperforms order on a variable slate of games/settings that exceeds it's points I would consider changing it. However, I have yet to see it because of the simple fact that Death is very attractive in *any* sort of game and it's not only spending points, but losing out on the points you could gain from Death.

[Ivan Pedroso]

UPDATE: Look below for a newer Version of the mentioned Excel-sheet.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Well back again with some dry math. This time I have used the right 0.3% value for the growth effect (and 6% for order, and 4% for growth). I have tried to take into account the reduction in bad events when taking order. So Order+2 vs. Growth+2, fueled by taking Luck-2, can be compared.

I've also used different values for the gold and growth boosts from taking growth and order in the different calculations. And the "reduction in bad events" bonus from taking order has also been fiddled with.

My conclusion is that "Growth+2, Luck-2" vs. "Order+2, Luck-2" accumulates the same amount of gold after about 50-80 turns, depending on how much of an influence you feel that order has on bad events.

All in all I get the feeling that the values of Order(6%) and Growth(4%, 0.3%) are about right. Maybe Growth(4%, 0.25%) would be better if it is a legal value.

I've attached the Excel-document used to make these comparisons (with comments). It should be usable as a testing template, when horsing around with different values of the scale parameters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[atul]

Very nice sheet. I especially liked the part where you have the huge formula and just note "we assume the situation's mostly identical, therefore". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Sure sign of a pro.

Might it be beneficial for the sheet to have some graphs if it were to be used as a testing template? I played with some plots but didn't come up with anything I'd consider too useful (like, a scatter plot of accumulated incomes of order/growth with different values or something...). Might not be a worth the trouble, especially if you intend to use the sheet just to bash your point in. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Ivan Pedroso]

atul said:
Very nice sheet. I especially liked the part where you have the huge formula and just note "we assume the situation's mostly identical, therefore". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Sure sign of a pro.


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Hehehe - I take that as a compliment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Might it be beneficial for the sheet to have some graphs if it were to be used as a testing template? I played with some plots but didn't come up with anything I'd consider too useful (like, a scatter plot of accumulated incomes of order/growth with different values or something...).


I tried to come up with some graphs myself, but they weren't too informative, but I'll toy around with it, now that I know that someone has looked it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Might not be a worth the trouble, especially if you intend to use the sheet just to bash your point in. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


Well it was never my intention to hammer any point through, I just got curious when Turin mentioned Growth being better than Order when considering income - that seemed a bit odd. And then I got thinking on: "How would I include the Order-event-frequency-reduction-effect in a simple semi-correct manner". It seems that growth is better than order even with this inclusion, but only in longish games, and in a way that seems balanced. Either you want more money early on and with a little more security (lesser risk of bad events that could cripple you economy early on) - then it's Order you want. Or you want more money in the long run, and have the time to wait - then it's Growth.

[atul]

Ivan Pedroso said:

I tried to come up with some graphs myself, but they weren't too informative, but I'll toy around with it, now that I know that someone has looked it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I probably won't need to tell you the benefits of visualizing when viewing that much data. But, whether you can find anything with any informational value in it, I don't know. Good luck (and, incidentally, Christmas).


Ivan Pedroso said: I just got curious when Turin mentioned Growth being better than Order when considering income - that seemed a bit odd. And then I got thinking on: "How would I include the Order-event-frequency-reduction-effect in a simple semi-correct manner". It seems that growth is better than order even with this inclusion, but only in longish games, and in a way that seems balanced.



I think your solution was quite elegant. After all, the effect of randoms is, well, random. But we're dealing with something that affects multiple provinces over multiple turns, so it'd average out on the long run. I'd say the values you have generated would represent the expected values of income over multiple games, each single realization differing a bit. Or something, English isn't my 1st language so this may be a bit incomprehensible.

Of course the actual value of Order's effect is up to debate. I'd maybe rate it a bit higher than 1/0.9 just because in the early game, an unlucky event has both greater chance to hit your capital (only few provinces) and greater impact on your game (a loss hurts more early). If you start with multiple provinces the beginning isn't that big a difference. But I'm a bit risk-averse.

[Ivan Pedroso]

Great comments Atul. You are quite right about the early-game risk of an event hitting your capitol, and that would hurt ones income badly, and that should raise the parameter somewhat above the "naïve" 1/0.90 value.

I have made some graphs on the sheet - it's all quite a bit more informative now.

It is obvious from the graphs that the value chosen for the "Order-effect-on-bad-events"-parameter plays a more important role than the other (well-known) parameters. This means that any conclusions drawn from this method are sensitive to ones choice of this parameter. My estimate of 1/0.90=1.11... for Order+2 came from the observation that in an Order+2 domain event frequencies are reduced by 10%. If a value of 1.40 is chosen (corresponding to an "effective reduction" in event frequencies of 14.2% pr. Order pick - an extreme value in my opinion, even in light of Atul's analysis), then the accumulated income from Growth+2 overtakes that from Order+2 at around turn 120. That indicates that if you are especially scared of an early income hit due to a bad event hitting your capitol (i.e. your private estimate of the parameter is close to 1.40) then Order is what you want even in a long game (with Zen's choice of scales).

I've attached the new and improved sheet to this post (and removed it from the other one above).

[Zen]

I've had a chance to read the data and I'm fairly satisfied with the results. Good job Ivan! It seems my calculations were a slightly off (I was less extreme on the event reduction than your latest spreadsheet).

As such, I think it would be a fair accessment to reduce the population effect of the scale to .25 (as far as I know this is a possible value). This would still give Order the single strongest gold% scale and still regulating Death as painful as other negative scales.

I will also be modifying the Temperature scale back down to 5%.

Barring that debate, anyone have any more feedback about the scales portion of the series? If it doesn't have any outstanding issues I haven't had a good hard look at I will move on in my work with the other aspects of the series.

[Zooko]

Is there a README for the latest balance mods yet?

I'm going to launch a MP game in a few days and I'd like to use the latest or bestest Zen's Balance Mods. The MP game will be slightly non-conventional, in that it will be intended to be a shorter-running game with more international war all along instead of only at the end:

1. Two teams of two players each.
2. Not too large map -- maybe Inland, or The Desert Eye, or even a smaller one if I could find a smaller, wraparound, good-looking map.

Thanks!

Zooko

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Board=Dom2MP&amp;Number=325448&amp;fpart =&amp;PHPSESSID=

[Chazar]

What about the magic scale? Is it moddable? I always wondered what that 0.5 mr bonus/malus is good for, so magic+3 = magic+2 with respect to magic resistance? Why would it not be sensible to have a full point of mr?

Have you, Zen, or anyone lese, considered the balance of fatigue due to magic scales?

[Yvelina]

Zen, we are about to start a new game with your pretender balance mod. I have played with the 1.72 Version, and I loved it, but I do not know where to find a list of the changes in Version 2.0. There is no 'read me' file in the archive.

[Alneyan]

Zen posted a change log for the 2.0 Version in this thread. Clicking here (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Board=UBB74&amp;Number=296181#Post31 8733) should bring the post in question. If it doesn't work, then I got something wrong while making my link.

[Zooko]

Didn't work.

How about this link:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Board=UBB74&amp;Number=318733&amp;PHPSES SID=&amp;fpart=20#Post318733

Thanks for drawing it to my attention!

Now what about the spell and scales readmes? :-)

update: Alneyan fixed the link to this:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Board=UBB74&amp;Number=296181#Post31 8733

update update: but Alneyan's link doesn't work for me -- it brings me to the beginning of the whole thread. :-P

Anyway, go to the 20th page of the thread and scroll down to post #318733.

[Alneyan]

Your link has your preferences about how many Posts should fit in a page, and the order of the Posts, so it only works with Users with the same preferences as yourself (the default ones). I know it brings me to the beginning of the post when I click on your link.

I think my link should now be working, but I haven't tested it yet while being logged out. The problem in my previous links was that I didn't mention on which thread I was (that is, I didn't give the number of the first post in the thread), which is something your own link did. Then my own link merely removes the part about preferences from your link, and it *should* work fine for everybody.

[Alneyan]

The fixed link does not work indeed, though it looks like anything with the post number works so long as the creator of the link is logged in.

The post in question is about 35 Posts down in the thread. But for the sake of simplicity, I will paste it back here (giving its position in terms of page will not help Users without different settings).


These are the following changes to the Pretenders v2.0

There are some things which are limited by the Modding Tools availiable for Illwinter. One of which is a redistricting of Pretenders, along with other statistical, auto-summoning, battle-summoning, certain unit modifications, global modifications and others. The Conceptual Balance series is my concept of Balance of the Game to allow *everything* to be a viable and game mechanical worthy choice not specifically for theme. While there is no "best" there are certain Pretenders with certain nations better suited to various strategies. With this in mind, here are the changes.

** denote changes from the Last Version

Weapons (weapon nbr / weapon name / changes)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(61) Fire Breath +1 AOE
(62) Bile +2 AOE
(254) Plague Breath +1 Ammo +1 AOE
(4) Lance +1 Length
(357) Light Lance +1 Length

New Weapons:
(999) Wing Buffet dmg -5, att 0, def 1, length 5, aoe 1 (flail, bonus)
(998) Roar dmg -5, att 0, def 0, length 5, aoe 1 (flail, bonus)

Pretenders (monster nbr / monster name / changes)

Monster:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(973) Ancient Kraken +50 PR, +50 CR
(779) Divine Serpent Pathcost: 30
(265) Dragon (blue) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(266) Dragon (green) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(216) Dragon (red) +5 Prot, +2 Prec, +Wing Buffet
(226) Great Sage (r. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, **+Mountain Survival, +Wasteland Survival
(267) Frost Father (b. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Sailing, **+Mountain Survival
(268) Master Druid (g. Dragon) +8 HP, -2 Enc, **+Swamp Survival
(644) Dracolich **Basecost: 150, +8 Prot, +4 Prec, +Immortal, +Wing Buffet
(645) Bog Mummy **+25 FR, +Immortal
(Dracolich 2nd shape)
(462) Manticore +8 Prot, +2 Att, +2 Def, +Wing Buffet
(294) Nerid Basecost: 75, +Mounted
(608) Phoenix +Fire
(334) Golden Naga Basecost: 90, -2 Enc, +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominion: 2
(157) Naga Basecost: 90, -2 Enc, +Mounted, +Body Slot, Dominion: 2, Stealth 0
(655) Scorpion King +Mounted, +Body Slot
(661) Shedu +2 Def, -2 Enc, +Wing Buffet, +Earth
(978) Great Black Bull Pathcost: 60, -2 Enc
(979) Great White Bull Pathcost: 60, -2 Enc
(269) Wyrm Basecost: 50, +4 Def

(138) Medusa +4 HP
(383) Prince of Death +100 CR, +100 PR
(215) Virtue +Astral, -Air


Giant:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(501) All-Father Pathcost: 50
(955) Asynja Basecost: 100, -2 Air, +Astral, +Nature, +Glamour, +Stealth 25
(156) Cyclops **+20% Forge Bonus
(109) Dagon +6 Def
(385) Daughter of the Land Basecost: 75, +Earth
(606) Great Mother -1 Enc
(603) Father of Serpents +3 Def, +2 Prec, Poison Cloud: 6
(858) Jade Emperor -1 Enc, +2 Prec
(964) Lord of Fertility +Awe +2, +Nature
(957) Lord of the Desert Sun +3 Def, +2 Prec, +Roar
(388) Lord of the Gates **Basecost: 75, +Fear, +Astral
(604) Lord of the Night Basecost: 125
(812) Lord of the Wild Basecost: 125
(387) Mother of Lions +3 Def, +Stealth 0, +Roar, +Nature
(961) Son of the Sea **Basecost: 100, -Water, +Earth, +Mapmove
(386) Son of the Sun (red) +2 Fire Gems
(384) Son of the Sun (white) Basecost: 75, +Fire
(602) Titan (Male) Basecost: 110, +1 Att, +1 Def, +1 Prec, +Mountain Survival, +Mapmove
(600) Titan (Female) +Nature
(652) Void Lord -Head Slot, Dominion: 3


Immobile:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(958) Colossal Head +Nature, +Blood
(1025) Divine Glyph Basecost: 75, +Immortal
(656) Fountain of Blood Pathcost: 30, +10 HP, +3 Blood Slaves
(158) Oracle Pathcost: 30, +10 HP, +2 Astral Gems
(657) Monolith +2 Nature Gems
(472) Sacred Statue Basecost: 30, Pathcost: 20, -Astral,


Human (rainbow):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(401) ***** Queen +5 Prec, +Stealth 0
(402) Crone (BQ 2nd shape) -3 Enc, +3 Prec
(246) Freak Lord +11 HP, -2 Enc, +Nature
(245) Arch Druid +11 HP, -2 Enc
(248) Arch Mage (Water) +11 HP, -2 Enc
(244) Arch Mage Basecost: 25, +11 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 2
(509) Arch Seraph Basecost: 50, +8 HP
(249) Crone = Hag Basecost: 25, +6 HP, -2 Enc, +3 Prec, +Iron Crutch
(250) Frost Father
= Rime Mariner Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Sailing
(270) Master Druid Basecost: 45, +8 HP, -2 Enc, +Swamp Survival
(251) Great Sage Basecost: 25, +8 HP, -2 Enc
(485) Great Enchantress Basecost: 45, +7 HP, -2 Enc, +Ethereal
(873) Great Seer of the Deeps Basecost: 45, +9 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 2, +Water
(486) Great Warlock -2 Enc, Dominion: 2, +Quarterstaff, +Fire
(550) Master Alchemist +9 HP, -2 Enc, +2 Prec, +Earth
(857) Smoking Mirror +5 HP, -2 Enc
(858) Smoking Mirror (Jaguar) +16 HP, -1 Enc, +7 Prec, +13 MR
(500) Skratti = Elder Skratti -1 Enc, +1 Att, +3 Def, +Blood
(653) Serpent King **+8 HP, -2 Enc, Dominion: 3
(654) Serpent King (Serpent) +16 HP, -2 Enc, +3 Def, +2 Prec
(874) Divine Emperor -2 Enc, Dominion: 3


(872) Ghost King Basecost: 110, Pathcost: 30
(180) Master Lich = Arch Lich **+1 Death Gems, +Disease Cloud 6
(179) Lich +50 FR
(395) Lich Queen +50 FR
(320) Saurolich +50 FR
(643) Bog Mummy +25 FR



Unedited Pretenders:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(607) Baphomet
(1026) Carrion Dragon
(601) Lady of Fortune
(120) Moloch
(956) Mother of Tuathas
(499) Nataraja
(605) Son of Niefel
(159) Sphinx
(862) Vampire Queen
(546) Void Lurker

[Pocus]

when the items mod will be released? I would be rather interested to see if some cost are upped a bit (namely sanguine rod to slow rampant blood harvest, and associating soul contract with an astral cost eg)

[Endoperez]

Why ASTRAL cost to Soul Contract? Shouldn't that be Fire?

[Zen]

I actually have a beta of the rest of the mods. I haven't released them due to time and effort constraints. I may get up the energy to put on some finishing touches and send them out for people to play.

[tinkthank]

Thank you for this very nice mod! I am sure that is a lot of work. Worth it!

(I have read through about 60% of the comments on this exceptionally long thread, but my connection crashed at one point and I had to restart and I came back after 2 days and forgot where I left off, I think I missed a bit.)

Would you mind a tiny bit of feedback/questions?

- I am unsure if I have the most up-to-date material, despite just having re-DLed from your site; in the .zips I have, there are now no readmes, and we are explicitly asked to check those for info.

- I love about 85% of your changes to the pretenders. There are great niches opening up there. (Maybe there could be a new pretender, related to the lich: the Niche?) The niches I failed to see (or the balance-related issues therein) which have not already been beaten to a dead horse state on this thread were:
- The D.Glyph. What are you envisioning? I had always liked him as an evil lurker, and now he is... what? Combat hungry?
- What was wrong with the Octopus in the heating vent?
- Did I miss the discussion on the Phoenix? I played him with his new strength, and it seemed just too easy for Marignon to get a F9 A4 now. I had often chosen the P. before, and although your mod opens up so many new flavors, it seems that if I am wanting Fire and Air (or Fire and Air and more) and immortality, I dont see too many other options. Why the f2? Have you considered raising his new magic path learning cost to 100 then?

With the new scales, the general twist of which I really like, I am not finished, but I when monkeying around, I found in general that I no longer find Order appealing to races which do even a tiny bit of patrolling or have any troops with armor or which may be interested in luck. Actually, I found with Machaka, Ryleh, Abysia default, Mari default, and Man LoT that Production helped me much more than Order, and since Growth synergizes now so well (if you are thinking about taking any luck -- and now there is even more reason to actually want to do so: Synergy #3) with Prod for income, that I found Order to be unappealing. I am not saying this is "bad", but since I am not done with testing yet, I dont want to put this in too rigid a normative framework. I just wanted to know what you and the others think: If it turns out that Order is actually unappealing, then it could be a no-brainer. I am not saying it is so now. I will have to see by tweaking your mod myself maybe back to Order 7 and giving it another run-through or 17.

Anyhow, thanks for your effort and also your time in reading and replying here.

[Zen]

ScalesMod 1.2 availiable at the webpage (http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen).

Stock are the unmodified values and Mod are the modified values replacing the stock. Rareevents is the likelyhood of the higher caliber of Luck events (Random Events are divided into two types, common and rare) per event.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Scale Stock Mod

Productivity/Sloth Gold 2% Gold 4%
Resources 10% Resources 15%
Growth/Death Gold 2% Gold 4%
Population .02% Population .03%
Luck/Misfortune Event 10% Event 13%
RareEvent 15% RareEvent 20%</pre><hr />

Zen tested, Zen approved.

[Zooko]

a sloppy and incomplete summary of changes in spellmod 1.8:


Summon Cave Drake Cost: E8 (E11)
Summon Fire Drake Cost: F8 (F11)
Summon Ice Drake Cost: W8 (W11)
Summon Sea Serpent Cost: W8 (W11)
Summon Animals Cost: N10 (N20)

Summon Air Elemental Cost: 100 ft + 1A
Summon Earth Elemental Cost: 100 ft + 1E
Summon Fire Elemental Cost: 100 ft + 1F
Summon Water Elemental Cost: 100 ft + 1W

Earth Elementals of any size now have prot 15. Dunno what they used to
have.
Fire Elementals now have the following hp for the different sizes:

30, 27, 24, 21, 18, 15

dunno what they used to have. Elementals have more hp than you think,
because if there is 30-hp elemental and the enemy whacks it with 50
damage, then there is a 27 hp elemental left! Earth Elementals are
cool because they regen, too.

Water Elementals now have the following defense:

17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12

Ice Elementals now have the following protection:

15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10

Ice Elementals now have the following weapons different than standard:

(831) Ice Elemental +2 Icicle Fist, -2 Fist
(832) Ice Elemental +2 Icicle Fist, -1 Fist
(833) Ice Elemental +1 Icicle Fist, -1 Fist
(844) Ice Elemental +1 Icicle Fist, -1 Fist
(855) Ice Elemental +1 Icicle Fist, -1 Fist
(866) Ice Elemental +1 Icicle Fist, -1 Fist

Ice Elementals now have cold, "iceprot", fire resistance -50, coldres
100, amphibian, magicbeing, neednoteat, poisonres 100. Dunno what they
used to have.

Living Fire, cost 100 ft + 1F
Living Clouds, cost 100 ft + 1A
Living Water, cost 100 ft + 1W
Living Earth, cost 100 ft + 1E

Revive Bane Lord Cost: D15 (D10)
Raven Feast Cost: A2 (A5)
Contact Harbinger Cost: S20 (S25)
Angelic Host Cost: S45 (S50)
Ether Gate Cost: S80 (S90)

Wild Hunt: research level 7 (?), Cost: G40 (?)
Ghost Riders: pathlevel 6 (?)
Enchanted Forest: Cost: 50G (?)
Tartarian Gate: Cost 25? (?)

(469) King of Mountains (Oreigenes) -1 Enc, +Regeneration (10 %)
(906) King of Deeper Earth (Barathrus) -1 Enc
(470) Father Illearth (Pedoseion) -1 Enc

(403) Horned Serpent +12 HP, +2 Prot, +5 AP
(628) Great Lion +8 HP, +3 Def
(924) Iron Pig +9 MR, +2 Att, +3 Def
(438) Kraken +3 Att, +100 PR, +Recuperation

(518) Troll +3 Att, goldcost 15
(519) Troll King +3 Att
(564) Sea Troll +3 Att, -Fist, +Claw (29), goldcost 15
(580) Sea King +3 Att

(932) Hama Dryad +10 Prot, -25 FR, -2 Mapmove, +someweaponidon'tknowwhat
(578) Bog Beast +1 Mapmove
(925) Tarrasque +4 Prot, +4 Prec, +1 Mapmove, +Roar

(361) Vine Man +7 Prot, +3 Def, -25 FR
(362) Vine Ogre +5 Prot, +5 Def, -25 FR
(931) Ivy King +3 Prot, +5 Def, +5 Prec

(511) Winter Wolf +5 Prot, +2 Str, +Stealth
(512) Fall Bear +5 Prot, +3 Att, +Claw
(513) Spring Hawk +2 HP, +5 Prot
(515) Summer Lion +5 Prot, +Fireshield (weak)

(534) Corpse Construct +10 HP, +5 Prot, +10 MR, +4 Att, +5 Def, +100 SR, +someweapondunnowhat
(314) Mandragora +Entangle
(476) Lumber Construct +4 Att, -Fist, +Crush

(626) Fallen Angel +4 Att, +Divine Garb
(464) Harbinger +3 Att, +Divine Garb
(465) Arch Angel +4 Att, +Divine Garb
(543) Angel of the Host +4 Att, +Divine Garb

(399) Divine Garb 9 Prot, 0 Enc, 0 Def

(776) Tartarian Monstrum +2 Misc Slots, +Wing Buffet
(777) Tartarian Monstra +Mounted, +Body Slot

(980) Vengeful Treelord +10 Str, +10 Att, +2 Prec, +25 FR, +100 PR, Ldr 75-0-75, +Regeneration (10 %), +Recuperation, +Entangle +3 Nature Gems, +4 someotherkindofgems, +Reinvigoration 5

Well this is taking too long. This list is incomplete.

--Z

Hi there,
May I suggest another minor change in the spells ? Its about Melancholia. Seems very weak in comparison with the other 'artillery' spells like Leprosy or Murdering Winter. Kills 5-10% of the units (IF ordinary units with 10 or 11 MR and mrl, less if elite). Kills 1 or 2 dominion candles. Temporary shifts dominion toward sloth.
Frankly I've never seen this spell in a game, and I even cant imagine any use for the price...
So I suggest to reduce the cost to 10 or 12 gems (instead of 20) and Earth4 (or even 3) as requirement.
Any thought ?

[Alneyan]

Zen said:
I actually have a beta of the rest of the mods. I haven't released them due to time and effort constraints. I may get up the energy to put on some finishing touches and send them out for people to play.



Do you think the item and units mod could be released in the near future? I was thinking of creating a sort of experiment game using all your mods, but that would probably be better with all the mods.

[Saber Cherry]

Zen,

I'm playing around with your spell mod, and noticed that Treelords receive no bonus when summoning vine beings, in contrast to their description. On closer inspection... you put #clearspec in the Treelord mods, which probably is the reason.

One other note - you changed the AOE for fire breath, but the fire breath that was changed was the Dragon God firebreath, not the fire drake which is actually in the spell mod. The have the same name ("Fire Breath") but different numbers.

[The_Tauren13]

Seems to me that heat and cold are no longer very important. What with both prod and growth giving 4% income, the 5% loss from the temp doesnt look like very much, when you consider that:
-the 10% supplies is of very marginal use
-4% income, 20% supplies, and .3% growth is much better than 5% income and 10% supplies
-in most cases 4% income and 15% resources is better than 5% income and 10% supplies
-1/4 of the time the scale will be closer to the desired temp (if you take it all the way to 3), so if you take cold 3 with a nation that prefers neutral temp, it will only act as (on average) 13.75% income loss, which is actually less damaging than only 2 turmoil points.

I think it would be better off being at least as damaging if not more so to help maintain the temperature as part of a nation's flavor, so I would suggest making it 7% income loss, just like the order scale. That way nations will typically stick with their prefered temp, but if you want to take some cold to e.g. help your ice devils, 1 point of order would make up for that. Now, I don't think this is possible with the modding tools, but it would be even better to make it hurt income and something else (resources?) to avoid just simply doubling up the order scale...

[The_Tauren13]

Just some quick suggested changes to the pretender descriptions:



Oracle description:
"The Oracle is tremendously strong in it's Dominion and magically powerful. Within it's sacred waters heavenly light gathers forming two Astral pearl each season."
should be
"The Oracle is tremendously strong in its Dominion and magically powerful. Within its sacred waters heavenly light gathers to form two Astral pearls each season." (it's -&gt; its; it's -&gt; its; pearl -&gt; pearls; forming -&gt; to form)

-- Son of the Sun (Fire) description:
"The Son of the Sun is a demigod of immense size claiming the divine heritage of the sun."
should be
"The Son of the Sun is a demigod of immense size claiming the divine heritage of the Sun." (sun -&gt; Sun)
also
"The sun has gifted it's heir with such heat that once per season he receives two Fire gems."
should be
"The Sun has gifted its heir with such heat that once per season he receives two Fire gems." (sun -&gt; Sun; it's -&gt; its)

Hag description:
"The Hag is also a master of magic and can be adept in several of the magic Paths."
I would capitalize 'magic' also because when you said the same thing in the Rime Mariner's description you had it capitalized, so in the interest of consistancy:
"The Hag is also a master of magic and can be adept in several of the Magic Paths." (magic -&gt; Magic)
Also, I would make the same change in the old crone's (now a hag also?) new description.

Monolith description:
"...but it can possess willing targets in order to make it's will heard and to perform tasks such as forging items for enchantment"
should be
"...but it can possess willing targets in order to make its will heard and to perform tasks such as forging items for enchantment." (it's -&gt; its)
also
"Druids perform monthly rituals of harvest and nature at the Monolith, focusing the energy into the form of two Nature gems during seasonal festivals."
I would change to:
"Druids perform monthly rituals of harvest and nature at the Monolith, focusing the energy into the form of two Nature gems." (removed 'during seasonal festivals')

#end

[Alneyan]

*Agrees with The Tauren about spelling changes* There is also the same it's =&gt; its in the mod descriptions.

[Boron]

One concern about your Spell Mod with which we are doing now a game :
Aim gives 100 precision but eagle eyes you left unchanged .

That is imo an unfair advantage for nations like caelum and vanheim compared to nations with nature magic like pangenea .

Otherwise the mod is great , some well thought changes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Oversway]

My mages always want to cast aim on archers instead of themselves http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Perhaps this is why. Or could just be an oversight.

[Endoperez]

The precision Aim gives cannot be changed. Are you sure you haven't confused the precision the spell is casted with (100 with Mind Burn, 1 with Falling Fires, -3 with Cloud of Death) with the precision bonus the spell gives?

[Boron]

Endoperez said:
The precision Aim gives cannot be changed. Are you sure you haven't confused the precision the spell is casted with (100 with Mind Burn, 1 with Falling Fires, -3 with Cloud of Death) with the precision bonus the spell gives?


Oh i thought precisision 100 means that Aim gives now + 100 Precision . But you are probably right . Thanks for the clarification Endoperez http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

[ioticus]

Zen, why did you increase the power of the Vine Ogre? I think if any summon deserves a nerf, that is it (besides the Devil and Fiend of Darkness.)

[The_Tauren13]

ioticus said:
Zen, why did you increase the power of the Vine Ogre? I think if any summon deserves a nerf, that is it (besides the Devil and Fiend of Darkness.)


I second that.
I would have given the vine ogre -5 attack instead of +5 Def and +5 Prot...

[Saber Cherry]

I kind of wondered too. I don't see any reason to nerf their strength, but boosting the cost to 2 gems seems fair.

[Huzurdaddi]

I think he boosted their prot since big vines are basically like bark and bark has prot of 10. As for the increased defence, I don't know. Not like it makes a heck of a lot of difference.

Finally, I totally agree that a cost of 2 gems would help balance them out.

*or*

We could simply mod casters to be more expensive ( as Saber Cherry was talking about ), perhaps x2 or x3 as expensive. That way mage turns would be far more precious and the cost would be balanced at 1 gem.

[Graeme Dice]

ioticus said:
Zen, why did you increase the power of the Vine Ogre? I think if any summon deserves a nerf, that is it (besides the Devil and Fiend of Darkness.)



I still don't see why people are so concerned about vine ogres? They are slow to summon, take huge amounts of the most valuable gem type, and are slow strategically. Unlike skeletons, which have a similar power level on the battlefield, they aren't lifeless, so you can't even swamp a SC with them.

[Saber Cherry]

Graeme Dice said:

ioticus said:
Zen, why did you increase the power of the Vine Ogre? I think if any summon deserves a nerf, that is it (besides the Devil and Fiend of Darkness.)



I still don't see why people are so concerned about vine ogres? They are slow to summon, take huge amounts of the most valuable gem type, and are slow strategically. Unlike skeletons, which have a similar power level on the battlefield, they aren't lifeless, so you can't even swamp a SC with them.



Most valuable gem type? I consider Death, Earth (esp. for hammers or alchemy), Fire (for alchemy), Astral (very useful and transmutable), Water (clams), and Slaves (summons, contracts, earth-blood stones) more useful. I mainly use Nature for winebags, summer swords, totem shields, vine ogres, lamia queens, the occasional swarm, and some Fairy Queens if the game gets that far. Of those, I'd rate winebags, ogres (rarely vinemen), and lamia queens the best. Am I missing something?

In any case, I'd almost always want 10 vine ogres (good strength, HP, attack, need-not-eat, 2 attacks, poison-immune, no upkeep, no magical leadership, no morale failure) rather than 5 nature gems.

You don't have to use them for swamping SCs, because you can use them to swamp many other things, considering they only need research-3 (and cons-4, for thistle mace). They are great as garrisons or bodyguards, needing no food, upkeep, or special leadership. They have better strategic mobility than undead (IMO), with 2 moves and forest survival. They cannot effectively be trampled. Best of all, cheap, common Druids can summon them (with thistle maces and ivy crowns, both of which Druids can make). Overall... they rock! And they're the only good low-level summon outside of Death and Blood.

[Graeme Dice]

Saber Cherry said:
Most valuable gem type? I consider Death, Earth (esp. for hammers or alchemy), Fire (for alchemy), Astral (very useful and transmutable), Water (clams), and Slaves (summons, contracts, earth-blood stones) more useful.



Basically it comes down to rings of regeneration, gift of health, and haunted forest. Gift of health and haunted forest can both be game-winners.


In any case, I'd almost always want 10 vine ogres (good strength, HP, attack, need-not-eat, 2 attacks, poison-immune, no upkeep, no magical leadership, no morale failure) rather than 5 nature gems.



Wouldn't you rather have 5-12 Lamia's for that cost?


You don't have to use them for swamping SCs, because you can use them to swamp many other things, considering they only need research-3 (and cons-4, for thistle mace).



Once you've built up enough of a force to take on your opponents, it will likely be past turn 20-30 and into the mid-game where you can expect to see battlefield spells, elemental royalty, and blood commanders.


And they're the only good low-level summon outside of Death and Blood.



True, but that hardly makes them overpowered.

[PDF]

Graeme,
I'm not convinced by your arguments :
Nature *has* some good spells, sure, but that does not make green gems more valuable than the others. IMHO they are often pretty much useless unless you play a nature-oriented nation, which is not the case with Astral, Earth, Death or Fire gems. The only less useful gems are Water...
As for Vine Ogres being inferior to Lamias, true again, but Ogres are a lesser summon and rather make better damage-absorbers than Lamias. Lamias require a higher level to cast effectively, Vine stuff having easy "improving" items.

Eventually I don't think Ogres need a boost - or rather all other low level summons require a much more serious boost !

[Oversway]

or rather all other low level summons require a much more serious boost



Are you saying this mod didn't boost the other summons enough, or are you referring to the unmodded game?

[The_Tauren13]

Graeme Dice said:
They are slow to summon,


How is getting 2 per turn with just about any mage, even a common indy mage (druid), slow?


Graeme Dice said:
take huge amounts of the most valuable gem type,


2 ogres per one gem isnt 'huge', and nature isnt any more valuable than any other gem type.


Graeme Dice said:
and are slow strategically.


What do you mean by 'slow'? They have 2/12 movement, so you cant mean that.


Graeme Dice said:
Unlike skeletons, which have a similar power level on the battlefield, they aren't lifeless, so you can't even swamp a SC with them.


... and they cant be banished and arent susceptable to solar brilliance and other undead killing type things.

[The_Tauren13]

Graeme Dice said:
Basically it comes down to rings of regeneration, gift of health, and haunted forest. Gift of health and haunted forest can both be game-winners.


Why are these so much better than tartarians, wish, and clams?


Graeme Dice said:
Wouldn't you rather have 5-12 Lamia's for that cost?



I would absolutely rather 10 vine ogres than 3 lamias, and it would take a level 12 mage to get 12 for that cost.


Graeme Dice said:
Once you've built up enough of a force to take on your opponents, it will likely be past turn 20-30 and into the mid-game where you can expect to see battlefield spells, elemental royalty, and blood commanders.



...and they make great tanks for your own mages. 106 HP for 1 gem is hard to beat. And by turn 20-30, you will have ivy kings making 4 for 1 gem (212 HP), which is impossible to match with any other summon.

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
How is getting 2 per turn with just about any mage, even a common indy mage (druid), slow?



Mostly because you are getting only two per turn, instead of a minimum of 4 points of research.


2 ogres per one gem isnt 'huge', and nature isnt any more valuable than any other gem type.



Two ogres are hardly a significant force. You'll need to spend 30 gems or more before you have a force that's anywhere near dangerous, and that will fall to a single battlefield spell.


What do you mean by 'slow'? They have 2/12 movement, so you cant mean that.



They can't be made to fly. As such, they are slow on the strategic map.


... and they cant be banished and arent susceptable to solar brilliance and other undead killing type things.



Yet they are still just as susceptible to all other mass killing spells. They also don't come in groups of thousands, unlike undead.

[PDF]

Oversway said:


or rather all other low level summons require a much more serious boost



Are you saying this mod didn't boost the other summons enough, or are you referring to the unmodded game?



I was referring to the unmodded game, where the Vine stuff are the only worthwhile low level summons. I've to have a closer look at the mod to see the other changes done http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif, I didn't check since at least a couple versions...

[Graeme Dice]

The_Tauren13 said:
Why are these so much better than tartarians, wish, and clams?



Tartarians are useless without gift of health or the chalice to support their creation, and oddly enough, both of those cost nature gems. Wish is a fun toy, but it is rare to find a wish that is more effective than wishing for gems or blood slaves. Clams are powerful, yes, but overrated in aggressive games.


I would absolutely rather 10 vine ogres than 3 lamias, and it would take a level 12 mage to get 12 for that cost.



Then you are, quite frankly, ignorant of just how much better Lamia's are than vine ogres.


...and they make great tanks for your own mages. 106 HP for 1 gem is hard to beat.



Your mages are going to be killed by the same battlefield spells that are killing the vine ogres. Also, who really cares that they have 56 hitpoints? That's something like three-six hits by standard national troops.


And by turn 20-30, you will have ivy kings making 4 for 1 gem (212 HP), which is impossible to match with any other summon.



If you are summoning ivy kings, then it takes 15 turns for their gem cost to pay off compared to using two N2 mages both with ivy crowns. If you are willing to spend that long, that late in the game, then I'll be quite happy to use my own nature gems to put up the various nature globals. I take it that you've never seen the haunted forest chain reaction in action?

[The Panther]

Graeme Dice said:
If you are willing to spend that long, that late in the game, then I'll be quite happy to use my own nature gems to put up the various nature globals. I take it that you've never seen the haunted forest chain reaction in action?



And if you think you can hold ANY decent global (nature or otherwise) more than 1-3 turns in the face of any opponent with 200+ clams or the Nexus (both pearl income which you claim is worth less then nature), then you must have never gotten very deep into a competetive MP game.

Ivy King's are a powerful summons indeed. After the relatively short payback time due to getting the four ogres per turn, you have a bunch of level 3 (or 4 with the mace) nature mages ready to charm the leaders of your huge undead army and dissolve the troops.

Ivy King = 20 nature, no upkeep, 4 ogres per turn
Druid = 140 gold plus 4.67 upkeep, 15 (10 with hammers) nature gems for mace + crown, 2 ogres per turn.
This is a no-brainer from any angle. The only reason to use the Druids is because you don't have high enough research to make the Kings plus you must somehow summon your first Ivy King to start the process.

I am still wondering how you are getting your undead army to fly easier than your vine ogre army. The Ivy King + vine ogre army is better strategically in my mind because of Fairy Trod.

Finally, it seems to me that mechanical men (using inferior earth gems) are superior to both vine ogres and lamias in every possible way.

[Zen]

I'm going to have to disagree with your Vine Ogre/Ivy King point.

I almost exclusively use my gems for: Lamias (great after about 40+ groups). Lamia Queens (I often have 4D or 3S Queens) and Mandragoras (this is usually the hammer that drops in the mid/lategame) and in distant 4th, depending on the circumstance/map/pretender Faerie Queens, especially if you have someone not ready for some Pangaean WS and good for summoning SCkillers)

I can't say I've seriously used Vine Ogres or Ivy Kings (outside of Charming) for offensive force *before* I have what I want from the above 4.

Re: Haunted Forest.

You only need 2 turns of this to win wars/games. It's sickeningly powerful *especially* if you are poised to drop a strong nation with stealth/teleport teams and eat up everything this will turn the tide in your favor that is usually irreversible to the targeted nation.

Being able to leave every province in your dominion defended with a single 1N Caster and pouring everything else into attack is a significant advantage.

[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
And if you think you can hold ANY decent global (nature or otherwise) more than 1-3 turns in the face of any opponent with 200+ clams or the Nexus (both pearl income which you claim is worth less then nature), then you must have never gotten very deep into a competetive MP game.



If your opponent has 200+ clams, then you are well past turn 70-100. Most crowded games have their first defeats around turn 15-20, and start to wrap up around turn 40, which is about the earliest that anybody can have 100 clams.


Ivy King = 20 nature, no upkeep, 4 ogres per turn
Druid = 140 gold plus 4.67 upkeep, 15 (10 with hammers) nature gems for mace + crown, 2 ogres per turn.



You really can't count on having many hammers to forge cheap items with a nature nation, so the payback time in terms of gems only is 15 turns. It is only after that point that the ivy king pays off.


I am still wondering how you are getting your undead army to fly easier than your vine ogre army.



Ermorian armies don't tend to need to fly as much because there tend to be no provinces inside the empire where they don't have at least a hundred troops.


Finally, it seems to me that mechanical men (using inferior earth gems) are superior to both vine ogres and lamias in every possible way.



Other than their fragility to physical attacks of course.

As for vine ogres being good meat shields, they are inferior to sea trolls for that role. A single ice devil or any other unit with breath of winter can kill very many sea trolls after a few turns.

[The_Tauren13]

Zen said:
I'm going to have to disagree with your Vine Ogre/Ivy King point.


Well, I guess Ill bow to the Wisdom of Zen.

However, I have two questions for you:
Do you think that the 2W clams are overpowered?
and Are you going to nerf them in your artifact mod? (assuming you are making one...)

[Zen]

Don't bow to my wisdom. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I have found that, across my gaming time. Death gems, blood slaves, air gems, etc. They all seem somewhat similiar with the exception of Fire Gems and Water Gems in terms of raw quality of potential uses (Summons/Items/etc).

Death certainly has no weakness in the variety it can use it's gems, but I wouldn't consider it the 'best'. I have found nature to be the same way, if only for the fact that it has a good, semi-unobtrusive global (Mother Oak) a few game-winner globals (Gift of Health with Tartarians, Haunted Forest) and a plethora of good items for gems (even if it's only Hydra Armor and Rings of Regeneration for magic items).

I have certainly had a great amount of successes with nature gems and in fact I have found it as 'needed' a type as Death/Blood for my strategies.

Clams: I don't particularly think that 2W is too cheap for Clams, the feeling or desire to make an Astral income from Water really comes from the lack of good gem uses for Water as much as Astral is a great and versatile gem type that can be fitted to a need at any particular time.

There is a change to them in my Magic Item mod, if only to make potential 'hoarding' investment less attractive while keeping a 'small Astral gem income with Water Gems' availiable. It's not a complete fix, but I think that particular debate has gone round and round and there is no good answer. Some people will always horde and will always try to set their strategies around it, seeing it as a potential payoff while other people will not let their weakness be so easily exploited in the early game.

I can certainly say it's boring hording (making clams is a sucky version of micromanagement some *feel* compeled to do in order to feel competitive) and it's boring fighting a hording war (Way too magical for my taste) that is less about how your fighting and more about how often can you go back and forth with your army-destroying-SC-killing-hyperempowered-Pretender-God-Too-many-path lameness that tends to degenerate into a stalemate. Stalemates tend to suck the fun out of Dominions 2 I have found. Even though you agree end the game, there is no sense of closure, which tends to irk me especially if I have devoted alot of time to the game (as Dominions games tend to).

Either way I'm rambling. I have revised some changes, I will release the final Pretender Mod (some minor typo corrections, slight change to a few Pretenders, nothing crazy), v1 Summons Mod (only adjusts summons statistics, not spell costs) v1 Spell Mod (only affects costs and spell effects), v1 Nations Mod (welcome to an attempt in variability and to make nations have gold be a factor in the late game outside of building mages and castles a pretty hefty task considering capitol only limitations) and the v1 Magic Items mod by the end of next week, if I'm lucky.

[lebarjack]

Zen, you have written a long time ago a sticky post about dominion links.
It seems that your website has been forgotten in this list.
I think you should add it.

[quantum_mechani]

Here is a readme file I hammered out for the spell mod (it looked like a lot of games were not using it due to lack of one).

Some things that occurred to me while creating it:

*Do the treelords really need the #clearspec command? Because it would be nice if they had thier vine ogre ability back.

*You increased the vine ogre defense by more than the vine men. It seems vine men should have the defense advantage since they are so much smaller.

*One command makes the haunted forest research level 8, which it is already at.

*Why is fate of oedipus research level 9?

*Consider making looming hell lower research and cheaper?

*What about making dark skies a fire (and maybe a point or two of air or earth) spell? Then you could reduce the cost/research without making air even better.

*Blood rain is never used at it's current position on the tech tree. Either make in no blood slaves, or lower research.

*With so many good uses for earth gems, Melancholia is never used. Again, lower research or cheaper would be nice.

*Get cracking on the other mods! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Sedna]

Thanks a million quantum.

Since we'll now (probably) be using this mod for Yarnspinners2 do you mind if I post the readme at the Yarnspinners2 Wiki (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org) for easy reference?

[quantum_mechani]

Sedna said:
Thanks a million quantum.

Since we'll now (probably) be using this mod for Yarnspinners2 do you mind if I post the readme at the Yarnspinners2 Wiki (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org) for easy reference?

Sure, I don't see why not. Oh, and here is a readme for scales while I'm at it.

[Zen]

Here is the Latest Version of the Pretender Mod. I am currently nowhere where I can upload to my little page, so it will be availiable for download here at Shrapnel until I can host the files.

Conceptual Balance Pretenders 2.2

Edit: I think I have fixed all the grammatical and spelling errors. If you see any thought, feel free to point them out.

[Zen]

Here is the first release of the Item Mod.

Please remember that this is a first release and anything you feel absolutely went in the wrong direction, please explain why.

No graphic at the moment, I will put one together when I can. File is availiable here to download until I can upload to the page Gandalf has so graciously provided space for during this whole time.

Conceptual Balance Magic Items 1.0

[ioticus]

Zen said:
Here is the first release of the Item Mod.

Please remember that this is a first release and anything you feel absolutely went in the wrong direction, please explain why.

No graphic at the moment, I will put one together when I can. File is availiable here to download until I can upload to the page Gandalf has so graciously provided space for during this whole time.

Conceptual Balance Magic Items 1.0



What changes did you make to magic items? It's hard to tell without documentation.

[Arryn]

Zen said:
Here is the Latest Version of the Pretender Mod. I am currently nowhere where I can upload to my little page, so it will be availiable for download here at Shrapnel until I can host the files.

Conceptual Balance Pretenders 2.2

Edit: I think I have fixed all the grammatical and spelling errors. If you see any thought, feel free to point them out.


You left out the banner from the archive.

All of your mods are also available for download from my site.

[Alneyan]

Changes to the cost of items:

- The Elixir of Life requires Nature 2 and Fire 2 (was Nature 3 and Fire 3)
- The Staff of Storms require Air 4 and Construction 6 (was Air 3 and Construction 4)
- The Frost Brand requires Water 1 and Earth 1 (was Water 1)
- The Serpent Kryss requires Nature 2 (was Nature 1)
- The Wraith Sword requires Death 3 (was Death 2)
- The Hell Sword requires Blood 4 and Fire 2 (was Blood 2)
- The Woundflame requires Death 3 (was Death 4)
- The Horned Helmet requires Nature 2 (was Nature 1)
- The Shambler Skin Armor requires Water 2 (was Water 1)
- The Hydra Skin Armor requires Nature 3 (was Nature 2)
- The Winged Shoes require Air 2 (was Air 1)
- The Clam of Pearls requires Water 2 and Astral 2 (was Water 2)
- The Fever Fetish requires Fire 2 and Nature 2 (was Fire 1 and Nature 1)
- The Blood Stone requires Blood 4 and Earth 1 (was Blood 3 and Earth 1)
- The Soul Contract requires Blood 5 and Fire 3 (was Blood 5)
- The Champion's Skull requires Death 1 (was Death 2)
- The Water Bracelet requires Water 2 (was Water 1)
- The Spell Focus requires Astral 2 (was Astral 1)
- The Lucky Coin requires Astral 2 (was Astral 1)
- The Lightning Spear requires Air 1 and Earth 1 (was Air 1)
- The Star of Heroes requires Earth 1 and Water 1 (was Earth 1)
- The Snake Bladder Stick requires Nature 2 (was Nature 1)
- The Rat Tail requires Nature 1 and Death 1 (was Nature 2)
- The Star of Thraldom requires Air 1 and Water 1 (was Air 1)
- The Demon Whip requires Fire 2 (was Fire 1 and Blood 1)
- The Standard of the Damned requires Death 3 and Astral 2 (was Death 3)
- The Ice Pebble Staff requires Water 2 (was Water 3)
- The Bow of War requires Air 1 and Fire 1 (was Air 1)

All the other changes affect the stats of various items, and repeating those here would probably not help much.

[Alneyan]

Bugs and typoes:
- It's instead of its (that is, when the possessive form is needed, and not the shortened form of it is), in the Pretenders mod and in the description of all the mods.
- The description of the Items mod is the one from the Scales mod.

- Elixir of Life is spelt Elixer of Life
- Horned Helm is used instead of Horned Helmet
- Rat Tail Whip is used instead of Rat Tail

[RibbonBlue]

I=Noob but..
Why did you nerf Water Braclet? It is not like water magic in general or the braclet its self is overpowered. I think(unless you improved water magic else where)that you should keep Water braclet water one so that nations with one water can forge it easily.
I think bloodstone should be blood 3 earth 2/3.
And also, I very much disagree with forst brand water 1 earth 1, because rather then fixing it, you just make it harder to get and make getting it rely on luck or getting a water 1 earth 1 mage.

[Alneyan]

The Frost Brand (along with other weapons) has also been given an aoe of 1, so it should be stronger now than before; that alone probably warrants the cost increase, but I am no expert on weaponry.

One reason for raising the cost of the Water Bracelet might be to make it harder for non-water nations: as it stands now, any nation with random mages can reach Water 2 fairly easy, and that level gives access to some of the best stuff in Water (Boots of Quickness and Clams in particular). With the Bracelet requiring Water 2, those nations will need to get to Water 2 via other means to begin with.

[CUnknown]

"Lifedrain weapons may still be useful in very unusual cases (your ice devil or tartarian with heroic ability: increased strength), but for the vast majority of cases, they are completely worthless. Hell swords especially: 40 blood slaves and 10 fire gems for a -10 damage weapon? What was Zen smoking?

And even in those unusual cases, I'd bet that a standard sword of sharpness might still be the better choice given the cost difference. Basically Zen made lifedraining weapons the absolute worst weapons in the game. If he hated them so much, why not just get rid of them completely?

I think a more reasonable change, such as increasing the cost to 20 death gems/blood slaves and/or reducing the damage to 4-5 instead of 9 would have been the way to go. Zen's choice was far too extreme..."
-------------------------------------------------------

This is what I posted in Boron's Faerun game. I like your other mods, Zen, but not this one. Why not try small steps first before making such drastic changes?

[Dimaz]

I think if you make water bracelet Water 2, you should also change helm which gives +1 Fire to Fire 2. Or leave both intact. Symmetry is good, but I don't think that Water 1 bracelet crashes the balance...

[PDF]

The Blood Thorn didn't get nerfed ?
Strange, it's the most overabused item ... :?

[Alneyan]

PDF =&gt; The Blood Thorn has kept the same cost, but the stats of the weapon itself were slightly nerfed. It became a 0 damage no strength added weapon... in other words, it isn't a weapon any longer.

Dimaz =&gt; I am not sure if my explanation is the reason why Zen made the change. I am not arguing for or against the change though, but merely explaining a possible rationale for it. The Fire Helmet is a bit different however, as it requires Fire 1 and Death 1, and not Fire 1 alone, so it is harder to raise Fire than Water.

CUnknown =&gt; Another problem with the current lifedraining weapons is that they will have a very tough time doing any real damage, as protections around 30 can be obtained without too much difficulty. To overcome a protection of 30, you will need a creature with a strength of 40 (before the 2d6oe dice kick in), and those aren't exactly the most common thing in the game.

I know I would much rather go the Gatebreaker way, a mighty weapon dealing 29 armour-negating damage and adding strength. That thing can kill in a single blow, and its cost is more or less on par with the new lifestealing weapons, and it helps a lot in sieges. The Soul Vortex body armour is likely a much better choice too, but only of use when facing a horde of units (where other choices are available).

[PDF]

Alneyan,
Ok about the Thorn, making it just a Blood boost is good.

Instead of GateCleaver, go for DuskDagger http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Chazar]

EDIT:This post has become obsolete. It was based on a misunderstanding of mine


Alneyan said:
The Blood Thorn [...] became a 0 damage no strength added weapon... in other words, it isn't a weapon any longer.

What is the reasoning behind 0 damage? I think it is quite clever to prevent strength from being added to the damage of a lifedrain weapon, but where is the problem with some base damage for the blood thorn? How could, e.g. a 1-damage no strength life draining weapon be abused? I can hardly imagine that a quickened Nataraja with 4 of those modified blood thorns would be any remote choice. So having some minor damage score might yield more choice for players...

Or is the drained fatigue independent from the damage score?

(How about turning the blood thorn into throwing knife (ammo:1, range str, damage 10,...) to explain the lack of strength? Is that possible mod-wise?)

[Alneyan]

Go ask Zen Chazar, I cannot speak for him. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif At most, I can provide with possible explanations, but my word should *not* be considered as being "official". In this case, I do not really have an idea about the damage of the Blood Thorn.

[Chazar]

Alneyan said:
Go ask Zen Chazar...


The question in my post was not specifically addressed to you, Alneyan, but rather to anybody who might offer an explanation why a 1-damage blood thorn would be a bad idea, despite quoting you... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Nerfing life-drain weapons is good and I understand that the blood thorn still yields a blood bonus, but where is the reason to disallow its use as a crappy weapon entirely?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif Oops, i now see that i misunderstood the issue entirely: The current blood thorn still does 0+2d6(oe) draining damage, right? I thought that "0-damage/no strength" really meant 0 damage always, but this is wrong, right? So I reast my case, sorry for bothering!
(Nevertheless I would like the throwing-knife blood thorn...)

[Alneyan]

It wasn't clear indeed; I wouldn't want to usurp Zen's position. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Very good point about the damage; I had completely forgotten about the dice part myself. You will still need a lot of luck to actually do some damage however, as protection will get that 2d6oe as well, and virtually everyone has a protection value higher than 0. Still, it should be possible to deal *some* damage, with a bit of luck.

[Oversway]

I think the wraith sword and hellsword changes are interesting. They still are usable against mid to lightly armored troops (perhaps -10 is too much, maybe -5?), but they are no longer good weapons to fight other thugs/scs/etc. with. Well, unless you can cast astral weapon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So instead of life draining weapons being the best choice for the majority of situations, they have more of a niche. Some of the comments from others (rather use gate cleaver, etc.) seems to back this up.

Of course, this is just my guess. I'd like to hear from Zen what his aim was.

[Boron]

Chazar had a very good idea imho.

You could make the Hellsword a No-Strength Weapon but 20 Weapondamage.
So you can field it vs. troops but some elite troops (Black Knights e.g.) have a good enough protection to make life draining them difficult.
Vs. other SCs you can forget the lifedrainweapon then with only 20 + 2d6 oe damage.

[Arralen]

Basically, that would mean making the sword better for anyone with STR&lt;11, and progressivly worse for anyone STR&gt;11.

[Huzurdaddi]

I think Zen did entirely the correct thing. The only other solution with life draining weapons is to remove them entirely. In a test increasing cost did not have much of an effect on people usage of life draining weapons due to their effect wrt. fatigue.

Zen's changes keep them in the game but make them useful only in limited circumstances.

[Oversway]

I'm not unhappy with the changes, although there are other games you could play with them. Keep the -10 damage but make them armor piercing. Or keep the dmg the same but give them a really bad att and/or def modifier. Or the high dmg nostr suggestion.

I'd like to see how games are with the current changes before trying to 'fix it' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Resok]

One quick suggestion Zen about the Item Mod:

Consider adding #bonus to chi kick? It makes no sense that the kick would count against DW penalties when for example the Gore Attack from the Horned Helm is considerd #bonus.

Resok

[Zen]

Hmm.

Lets start with the Lifedrain Weapons:

The reasoning for the change in costs was to create more scarcity. It's bad enough that the best weapons in the game give you hp and fatigue that allows general use of about 80% of the game (non-lifeless unit), but they also are priced so reasonably that even if you did want to choose another weapon, for another 5 gems or 5 slaves you could pick yourself up the all-in-one use weapon.

With that said. The Hellsword is supposed to be priced to 2B2F it went one too high in a late test game and didn't get changed back.

For the Damage portion. I wanted to create only situational use of the life drain weapons and for them to be statistically _worse_ than other weapons of the same construction and path requirement levels.

-10 Damage still allows use for anything over 25 Str to lifedrain about half as well as it does in an unmodded game (where you could simply equip a lifedraining weapon and a ring of regen and virtually no amount of recruitable troops surrounding a SC will be able to outdamage the lifedrain and regen)

This also still allows Astral Weapon and Weapons of Sharpness to play into the equation and not be overly powerful. I was debating between the -6 and the -10 damage variables and ended up going with the -10 in order to see the reaction. Even with -6 (Which is a -15 Total Damage removed from Lifedrain weapons) the lifedrains are more in consideration than with -10 (where you might *not* consider them on your ID's or BL's simply because an AOE weapon might let you live longer).

This is the first version and as such I'd rather have -10 Damage try to be exploited rather than the -6 that I know can be exploited to what extent.

Final Note about Lifedrain Weapons: I don't hate them at all. But I do consider them so good that there is no reason in an unmodded game to not pick one unless you are taking a herald lance (for the only thing that your lifedrain weapon doesn't work on). And with the limit of the modding tools the only answer is to mod the base stats in order to create a sense of equilibrium between magical weaponry. Just upping the cost wouldn't change the game to a great extent except making the person with the most Death/Blood Slaves able to play the game the exact same way as in an unmodded game (I.E. winning with the same tired tactics), which is not the direction I chose to go because I feel that lifedrain in an unmodded game is so good and renders too much so suboptimal that it isn't chosen when considering something for efficency.

Re: Bloodthorn: The weapon is no longer considered a threat and you can't get lifedraining and a shield by any reasonable combination (Astral Weapon, etc). That was my intent.

[Zen]

Good Idea Resnok. I thought it was already but apparently not.

I will be releasing a new mod in the next day or two.

[Ironhawk]

I like the reasoning of your changes to the lifedrain weapons, Zen. Looking forward to playing some games with the mod.

[Resok]

Just out of curiousity: What was the reasoning behind switching the Atlantis/Ryleh Pretender "Son of the Sea" to 2W 1D? I thought it was much more thematic before to have 1E and the 1D seems completely out of place. Then again that's just my opinion so feel free to ignore me, I'm just curious to hear the reasoning. There are many spells like fire ward and the like that make alot of sense thematically for a water nation to have. Water being the elemental opposite of fire after all... but anyway, I'm babbling.

Just my opinion on the matter as I found thematically a water/earth pretender made sense whereas a supposed "Son of the Sea" being having death magic just doesn't. There are plenty of other death magic pretenders for both water nations (liches/ghosts and such).

Resok

[Cainehill]

Regarding the Dragon pretenders - seems that either the red and green dragon should be cheaper, or have their alternate form changed.

The reason I say this is that the blue dragon gets the benefit of its alternate form : sailing and cold resistance. By contrast, the red dragon's "Great Sage" counterpart doesn't get a sage bonus ( 2F = 4 research; great sage with 2F = 12 research).

Similarly, the Green Dragon's Druid form doesn't get stealth or forest survival, nor does it get 2 extra vine men per casting.

I suspect this is a bug, because the dragons are supposed to benefit from the alternate form's abilities, but in fact only the blue dragon does.

[Oversway]

I agree I liked the son of the sea a little better with earth. I'm not sure thematically if it matters to me but I did like the variety.

[Cainehill]

Resok said:
Just my opinion on the matter as I found thematically a water/earth pretender made sense whereas a supposed "Son of the Sea" being having death magic just doesn't. There are plenty of other death magic pretenders for both water nations (liches/ghosts and such).




I'd think water/air would actually be more thematic - air for wind, storms, etc, things all associated with the sea and oceans. But there isn't a lot of synergism between the two, whereas water/earth at least has claymen (and I think the stone of Atlantis).

[Nerfix]

Regarding the False Horror, why not increase the path required to cast it, make it multipath (Air/Astral) or add a gem cost to it? Or maybe all three if it is that potent spell.

[Huzurdaddi]

It's no so potent that it should have a gem cost. But I am all for increasing the path requirement. A3 sounds nice. Or heck A2S1 that would be nice ( that would put it out of reach of everyone but Marignon which would be nice ).

[Nerfix]

A2S1 could do it.

[Cainehill]

Huzurdaddi said:
It's no so potent that it should have a gem cost. But I am all for increasing the path requirement. A3 sounds nice. Or heck A2S1 that would be nice ( that would put it out of reach of everyone but Marignon which would be nice ).



Also within reach of Caelum, Man, Vanheim - air mages with a random, and somewhat better than 1/16 of Arco's mystics, with their astral with 3 random elementals.

I'm not so big a fan of going out of the way to restrict a spell to one nation, but then again it'd be nice to not deal so often with masses of cheap mages spamming those things.

[RibbonBlue]

I vote for A2 S1!!!!! Yes power to the marignon of the sea. THe SEA I SAY The Sea. Fere the power of the SEA. THe Blue Crusaders of the Ocean of Turmoil Rise up to cast Flase HOrrers!!! Run!!! Scary!!!

[Cainehill]

Proposed tweaking to the Shedu :

Remove "Wing Buffet" and give it a head butt, or a stronger non-AoE wing buffet. My rationale for this is that the Shedu is a size-6 trampler : it will thus never use the wing buffet unless fighting something size-6, in which case a wing buffet with an area of effect of 1 is pointless - it can only hit the single size 6 target.

[Graeme Dice]

The point of the wing buffet is both to do damage, and to repel attackers. Perhaps it should get a length 5 head butt?

[Nerfix]

Also, how about making the Clam cost more in water and add some astral to the requirement too?

[Saber Cherry]

Then it can't get poisoned, hurt, or repelled from head-butting. Only things with length, or armored things (like horns and scorpion stingers) should have length &gt; 0.

[Graeme Dice]

Saber Cherry said:
Then it can't get poisoned, hurt, or repelled from head-butting.



That would be the point, if it's going to be as good as wing buffet currently is.


Only things with length, or armored things (like horns and scorpion stingers) should have length &gt; 0.



Or wing buffet, which repels pretty much everything other than pikes and lances.

[Turin]

I have made a modified blackunitview map containing all the units zen has changed in his spell mod. That hopefully helps to make comparisons easier.

[ioticus]

Turin said:
I have made a modified blackunitview map containing all the units zen has changed in his spell mod. That hopefully helps to make comparisons easier.



I tried it out but I don't see any difference in Zen's units and the unmodded units, at least on the Devil and Vine Ogre that I checked.

[Cainehill]

ioticus said:
I tried it out but I don't see any difference in Zen's units and the unmodded units, at least on the Devil and Vine Ogre that I checked.



Too tired to jot down the stats on devils from unmodded to modded, but the vine ogre has 10 protection instead of 5.

[Endoperez]

ioticus said:

Turin said:
I have made a modified blackunitview map containing all the units zen has changed in his spell mod. That hopefully helps to make comparisons easier.



I tried it out but I don't see any difference in Zen's units and the unmodded units, at least on the Devil and Vine Ogre that I checked.



Did you enable Zen's mod first...

I forgot to enable the heroes upgrade mod when viewing that map, so you wouldn't be the only one... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

[ioticus]

Endoperez said:

ioticus said:

Turin said:
I have made a modified blackunitview map containing all the units zen has changed in his spell mod. That hopefully helps to make comparisons easier.



I tried it out but I don't see any difference in Zen's units and the unmodded units, at least on the Devil and Vine Ogre that I checked.



Did you enable Zen's mod first...

I forgot to enable the heroes upgrade mod when viewing that map, so you wouldn't be the only one... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif



Uh, Doh! That was it, thanks.

[Turin]

Regarding the conceptual pretender mod, I get the feeling that almost all the human pretenders are still pretty useless. Spending 50-100(1-2 scales) points more and actually getting a decent combat chassis(naga) seems to be a dominant strategy.

In addition most humans seem to be pretty generic. a rime mariner/master druid/freak lord is just an archmage with cold resistance and one path preplaced.

So I´ve modified zen´s mod for myself, so that it raises their skill in their primary path to 2, gives the archmage 1 in every path and raises his cost, gives glamour to the arch seraph, gives the great sage a researchbonus of 20 and raises death on the bog mummy to 2(because you´d much rather take the dracolich or a normal lich than her).

But even with those changes I don´t feel that they are particularly good choices, because specialists are usually simply better than rainbows.

[Nerfix]

I'd hi...take Archmage in that mod. Definedly.

[Cainehill]

Hmm. Just looking at it, seems to me the Blood Thorn has been nerfed rather too much. Damage 0 and strength not added??? It's not an athame, it's a stick of jello.

I can see damage 0; I could even see a negative damage on it (the ceremonial decorations, gold construction, etc) but not the bit about strength not being added. With a negative damage and strength, there would be very few commanders using it - some pretenders, giants, units that receive heroic strength; oh, and ones that could cast Astral Weapon of course. (Admittedly it would be okay against many independents for other commanders, but still relatively useless against late game commanders, summoned units, etc.)

[Huzurdaddi]

I think the idea with the blood thorn is to keep it as a path booster which uses a hand slot but remove it use as a weapon.

[Alneyan]

That, and the other lifedraining weapons have been weakened quite a lot too: the Wraithsword and the Bloodsword are a lot more expensive (I don't have the figures under my eyes right now though), and their basic damage is -10.

In this situation, the Bloodthorn cannot act as a decent weapon, at least not without a price increase: otherwise, it would be much better than the other two "real" lifedraining weapons.

[Zooko]

I think that in the next version of Zen's Conceptual Balance mods, the ones where the recruitable mundane units are rebalanced, that Hoburg militia should be nerfed. They are just TOO TOUGH for their measely 6 gold price.

P.S. If there were any point to this post, it would have been that playing a two-vs.-two format makes things previously considered to be weak into things that serious players do occasionally use. Or maybe Tauren wasn't being serious. But his damn Hoburg militia did indeed win the battle for him. Also, this format is fun! But to try to be relevant to the topic of this thread, it seems that what is "balanced" for an all-vs.-all format is different than what is "balanced" for a two-vs.-two format.

[TheSelfishGene]

When you have to nerf something to the point of doing *-10* damage; that, my friends, is what we like to call down he'ah good ol' fashioned imbalance with a lick o' the cream gravy. Sho' 'nuff.

[Arralen]

You don't have a clue, do you?
A typical SC has STR 30+, therefore even when using a weapon with DAM -10 they still do 20+ points of damage.

Enough to get through every units armor, but not enough to get +10HP leeched by every successfull attack.

[Nerfix]

Zooko said:
I think that in the next version of Zen's Conceptual Balance mods, the ones where the recruitable mundane units are rebalanced, that Hoburg militia should be nerfed. They are just TOO TOUGH for their measely 6 gold price.



Mmmh, combine Cherry's Recruitable Rebalance with Zen's Conceptual Balance series? I allready use them together.

[PDF]

Myself I just don't like the -10 damage "trick". Instead of being exceptionnally good Lifedrain weapons become near useless, and everyone will switch to Duskdagger+Sword of Quickness or whatever combo instead. Up to the time when someone will mod Duskdagger to be dam 2 nostr and Sword of quickness 4W http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif !
Bloodthorn as a Blood booster but useless weapon is fine.

Arralen, I'm not that sure STR30+ SC are that common.
In fact only few Pretenders have that level, even Demons/Devils are in the 20s...

[Nerfix]

SoQ is good but I don't think it is overpowered. It only does damage and attacks only as many times as a common flail.

[PDF]

Nerfix said:
SoQ is good but I don't think it is overpowered. It only does damage and attacks only as many times as a common flail.



Yeah, right. I was thinking that SoQ gave Quickness, that could be used to get an extra second-hand attack, but it's not the case (in Zen MIQR at least http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). My mistake.

[Sandman]

I've said it before, but common life-drain weapons should only have a 50% draining effect. Can't be modded, though.

[Graeme Dice]

I'm not sure what you mean by a 50% draining effect. Life-drain weapons return half the damage done in hitpoints, and twice the damage done in fatigue.

[Sandman]

Half of that then.

[The_Tauren13]

Are you ever going to upload the item mod and the latest pretenders mod onto your webpage?

[Oversway]

I think the -10 is a pretty good solution. I can't think of a better solution that can actually be modded.

You can always cast +str spells or use +str items (bear claw talisman, boots of giant strength), etc. Alternatively, cast astral weapons or even weapons of sharpness. Plus now you have something to do with heroic strength.

Life drain weapons are very powerful in the unmodded game. I don't think that they are near useless with this mod. You can still wipe out a ton of troops with the right SC. I agree that people will switch to other tactics, but isn't that the point?

[YellowCactus]

Hi Zen.
We're using your mods in a Faerun game which started last month. I have Luck +3 scales -3 Turmoil and am wondering about the statistical odds of all these bad events. Over 20 turns we're looking at like 4:1 bad v/s good events with no (none, zippo, ziltch) bonus gold events, and no invasion events. Two or three events each turn, so the events are coming, but.....
Could this be a MOdding problem, or am I simply experiencing an outlaying anomoly of /threads/images/Graemlins/icon04.gif luck?
-Yc

[Cainehill]

Are you sure you've got the mod turned on? An 11 turn test I just ran for something I was writing about CW, I had as many as 3 events in a turn while I only had 1 province. Probably 20 events in all, and I got only 1 bad event out of those 20 : about 6 or so gave gold in amounts ranging from 75 to 500, 4 or 5 gave gems, 1 gave a magic item, 2 gave (feh) militia and a priest.

[Zooko]

I'm using Scales Mod 1.02 a.k.a. 1.2 and I have Turmoil 3 and Luck 3 and I would say that I'm reasonably lucky. I have gotten two Immortal Heroes of Tien Chi and a Necromancer, for example. :-)

[YellowCactus]

Hmm...Guess I'll have to just tough it out!
-yc

[WraithLord]

Can anyone tell me where can I find the info on the new scales (the new numbers that is)?

[Turin]

it´s in the dm file:

#deathincome 4 -------&gt; means one scale of growth(death) raises(lowers) income by 4%.

#deathdeath 3 --------&gt; means you get 0.3% more pop per turn per growth scale.

#slothincome 4 ---------&gt;means one scale of productivity(sloth) raises(lowers) income by 4%.

#slothresources 15---------&gt;means one scale of productivity(sloth) raises(lowers) resources by 15%.

#misfortune 13------&gt; one scale of luck makes a good event 13% more likely.

#eventisrare 20------&gt; raises the chance that an event becomes a rare event.

[CUnknown]

About the spell mod and elementals:

I like the fact that elementals have been made cheaper to summon in combat; they're viable battlefield spells now. However, I worry that they may be too good, especially "living clouds/earth/water/fire" (the one that summons 4 elementals for still only 1 gem).

I think the normal elemental summoning should stay at 1 gem, but that living earth should be moved to 2 gems. That's still cheaper than it was in the original game. Also, it's still worthwile compared to the normal elemental summoning: that one summons 1 elemental for 1 gem. Living Earth summons 4 elementals for 2 gems, a nice x2 effect for your research investment. Right now in Zen's mod, it's a x4 effect, and that seems a little unbalanced.

But, I don't mind if it stays the way it is, if so I'll just continue to cast the crap out of it when I get the research level.

[Cainehill]

Seems about right - a level 8 research spell is supposed to have some oomph, not to mention that most nations aren't going to have a whole lot of mages that can cast it. The lower level versions, I generally wouldn't cast at all, unless maybe something desperate was going down : just not efficient to burn 1 gem per elemental.

[Chazar]

What about Draconians? Would it not be thematical for the size 4 Draconians to have the "Wing Buffet"-Weapon as well in addition to their bite attack?

The two added nature skills for the chief is nice, but I feel that they are still inferior as compared to sea trolls (same level, same cost) who regenerate and are not cold blooded...just wondering.

[Nerfix]

But Draconians OMG HAX

FLY! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Huntsman]

Oracle doesn't seem to be spawning astral gems. How does this work exactly?

[quantum_mechani]

Huntsman said:
Oracle doesn't seem to be spawning astral gems. How does this work exactly?

Normally, they apear in the oracle's gem box. However, there is a bug in the current version where it no longer produces them.

[Cainehill]

But the Great Enchantress (in Zen's pretender mod) does produce her one per turn. Seems it should be fixable via mod?

[Endoperez]

As far as I understand, the bug is in the current version of Zen's mod. Greath Enchantress generates an astral pearl pper turn in the base game, but the Oracle's ability is added in the mod.

[Huntsman]

Endoperez said:
As far as I understand, the bug is in the current version of Zen's mod. Greath Enchantress generates an astral pearl pper turn in the base game, but the Oracle's ability is added in the mod.



Bummer. 2 pearls per turn is the Oracle's most redeeming quality!

[Endoperez]

It shouldn't be that hard to fix if it really is a bug in the most recent version of the mod... But as there have been gem-generating units since Dom:PPP and the newest patch is old, there is little possibility of the game having the bug.

[Turin]

The oracle doesn´t generate the gems, because Zen put a #clearspec command after the #gemprod command. So it gains the ability to produce gems and loses it immediately.

[Huntsman]

Turin said:
The oracle doesn´t generate the gems, because Zen put a #clearspec command after the #gemprod command. So it gains the ability to produce gems and loses it immediately.



I do that with my kids: "Here, have a Snickers. NEVERMIND!" and yank it away as they grab for it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

[Edi]

All right people, there seems to be some annoyance about Zen's mistake regarding the Oracle.

I've attached a corrected version of the mod file (v2.21), as well as an updated readme for it to this post.

Enjoy.

Edi

[Oversway]

Thanks Edi!

[ioticus]

Huntsman said:

Turin said:
The oracle doesn´t generate the gems, because Zen put a #clearspec command after the #gemprod command. So it gains the ability to produce gems and loses it immediately.



I do that with my kids: "Here, have a Snickers. NEVERMIND!" and yank it away as they grab for it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif



That's just wrong!

[Oversway]

So I was reading one of the mp threads talking using the mods and I thought I'd post some of the ideas here that were interesting. I don't take credit for any of it.:

- make the common sc buffs (quickness, flying, and luck were mentioned) harder to obtain. Raise spell level and/or cost, as well as raise item cost.

- nerf life draining weapons less... people seem upset with -10 damage on wraith and hellswords. Would 0 damage be better compared to some other weapons? I'm not sure what is a good choice here since I don't mind the item mod as is.

[Reverend Zombie]

Oversway said:

- nerf life draining weapons less... people seem upset with -10 damage on wraith and hellswords. Would 0 damage be better compared to some other weapons? I'm not sure what is a good choice here since I don't mind the item mod as is.



The -10 damage seems wrong to me, thematically (I know everyone's sense of theme differs).

What if the swords had the base damage of a "normal" 2-hand sword, but were balanced with a *defense penalty*?

The idea here is that the swords are so bloodthirsty that they pull their wielders along recklessly as they seek more life to drink.

[Oversway]

A high defense and/or attack penalty would be interesting. Life draining swords are hard to use http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So how much? -3a -3d? -6d only? It sounds like a good idea but I'm probably missing some facet...

[PDF]

Reverend Zombie said:

Oversway said:

- nerf life draining weapons less... people seem upset with -10 damage on wraith and hellswords. Would 0 damage be better compared to some other weapons? I'm not sure what is a good choice here since I don't mind the item mod as is.



The -10 damage seems wrong to me, thematically (I know everyone's sense of theme differs).

What if the swords had the base damage of a "normal" 2-hand sword, but were balanced with a *defense penalty*?

The idea here is that the swords are so bloodthirsty that they pull their wielders along recklessly as they seek more life to drink.



Yep, that what I did in my small ItemBalance mod.
Ad : Available here ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gifhttp://pascal.difolco.free.fr/ItemBalancePDF_0.95.zip

[quantum_mechani]

About a month ago I talked with Zen, and he said it was unlikely he would be putting in more work on the conceptual balance mods. So, we arranged that I would take over the project, with input from him and others.

Anyway, after a lot of modding and testing, here is finally the full set of conceptual mods (naturally, there will be more versions to fix whatever problems crop up). As making readmes for all of these would be a monumental task, I have only made one for items, which are almost the only changes that are not easy to check in game. Here is highlight of what is different from previous mod versions:

Pretenders:

Oracle is fixed, divine glyph once again is immortal, and lots of human rainbow mages are improved.

Scales:

Very little different, though supplies and gold will be slightly more common.

Spells:

Many globals that are rarely used are cheaper (riches from beneath, wrath of the sea), harvester of sorrows has better stealth, some other minor tweaks to spell costs.

Items:

Almost a complete overhaul. Life drain nerf re-done, most area of effect weapons back to normal, extra cost to items like water bracelet removed, many weak items like stone sphere made cheaper. Most of what remains from the last version is the hoarding changes, and the boosts to ranged weapons.

Nations:

No earlier version to compare to. In general, troops with low armour were made cheaper, and mages/sacred units only improved for the weakest themes (BE Ermor, IF Ulm, serpent cult Pythium, etc.). Also base caelum received a nerf, remains to be seen if it is enough. In addition, Turin's hero mod is built into conceptual nations.

Complete:

For ease of use, all of the above mods have been complied into one for those who want it.

[quantum_mechani]

Pretenders.

[quantum_mechani]

Scales.

[quantum_mechani]

Spells.

[quantum_mechani]

Items.

[quantum_mechani]

Nations.

[Edi]

Quantum, I can provide readmes for the Pretender and Spell mods, because I've already got those ready. They need just a couple of tweaks and will be good for the current version.

The scales mod should not be very difficult to do, as it is not very large. The nation and item mod readmes would be the most troublesome ones, and as long as you take care of the item mod readme, I can produce a readme version for the nations.

Edi

[Edi]

I don't know what program you have used to make the spell and nation mods, Quantum, but their formatting when opened up in a basic text editor is completely FUBAR, with /par tags at the end of every line and some other crap liberally sprinkled at the beginning and end.

It'd be nice if they were made with something that produces unaltered plain text instead of adding all kinds of superfluous formatting that more than likely screws them up. It also makes trying to read them with stuff like Crimson Editor or Notepad or other plain text editors a pain in the arse.

Edi

[Edi]

The complete version of the mod also suffers from the same formatting error.

The Pretender mod has one potential problem: You have added Dwarf Elder to the list of pretenders, restricted only to Vanheim, and given it certain abilities, among others gem production (2 earth gems).

You have neglected to take into account that making a prophet out of a dwarven smith turns it into that selfsame monster, the dwarf elder (#324). What this means, in essence, is that Vanheim gets a free gem generator that produces 2 earth gems per turn from turn 3 onwards, because you make some other pretender, recruit a dwarven smith on turn one, prophetize them on turn 2 and from turn 3 onward you get an extra two gems every turn.

And if the prophet gets killed, well, rinse and repeat. This is, in my opinion, something of a serious balance problem, especially in the early game or on maps with low site frequency.

Edi

[Edi]

The complete version of the mod also suffers from the same formatting error.

The Pretender mod has one potential problem: You have added Dwarf Elder to the list of pretenders, restricted only to Vanheim, and given it certain abilities, among others gem production (2 earth gems).

You have neglected to take into account that making a prophet out of a dwarven smith turns it into that selfsame monster, the dwarf elder (#324). What this means, in essence, is that Vanheim gets a free gem generator that produces 2 earth gems per turn from turn 3 onwards, because you make some other pretender, recruit a dwarven smith on turn one, prophetize them on turn 2 and from turn 3 onward you get an extra two gems every turn.

And if the prophet gets killed, well, rinse and repeat. This is, in my opinion, something of a serious balance problem, especially in the early game or on maps with low site frequency.

You have also neglected to specify starting dominion for this god. I don't know if that defaults to startdom 1, but it's another potential problem. I've just commented out the lines from the copy in my mods folder, but I advise removing this new pretender altogether unless you make a completelynew monster and get graphics for it from somewhere.

Edi

[Edi]

The nation/hero mod also suffers from the following problem: For nations whose heroes differ from one theme to the next but retain the same name (specifically Pythium), the heroes for one theme have been modified, while the others have not. E.g. the Pythium hero who rides a serpent (Hierogallus the Hero) is modified for the basic theme (monster #506) but not for Serpent Cult (monster #866).

Edi

[Edi]

I'm going through the nation and hero mod at the moment, fixing the screwed up formatting and checking for errors. I've fixed the Pythium hero problem, but I need to look at the weapon and armor assignments and modding sections.

As far as I know, it is possible now to mod weapons and armor by their ID numbers, wo this is what should be done in this mod as well, as it is NOT being done. I will probably change all of those to refer to weapons and armor by ID number and add a comment in the form of "-- &lt;weapon/armor name&gt;" to the end of the appropriate lines. It will make maintaining the mod much easier, and will eliminate error rate due to spelling mistakes.

Edi

[Edi]

Another problem that I had to fix was that the Pretender mod was happily trying to use new armor types that were only specified in the nation mod. Here's a hint: If you have a series of mods that are supposed to be complementary, make sure that you have ALL the new weapons, armor and modifications to existing ones specified in EACH mod. Otherwise funny and not so funny things might happen. It makes for some more maintenance headaches, especially if using versions that were not updated at the same time, but it beats no having the mod work as intended.

I'll post the checked mods in one single zip file when I'm done, and I'll just add .01 to the version number (i.e. Pretenders 2.5 will become Pretenders 2.51 etc)

Edi

[Edi]

Caelian seraph description talks about them having both air and water magic, but they only have A2, no water at all. I'll ad W1 for them.

Edi

[quantum_mechani]

Thanks a lot, Edi, I realized they would need editing, but I didn't count on this much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I was aware of the formating issues with making the mods in .rtf, but by the time I realized it the mods were basicly done. Good catch on the gem genearting issue, and te description is also wierd, he should be scrapped as a pretender. Water magic on the seraph is probably a good idea.

[Edi]

You're welcome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I'm pretty anal retentive about spelling errors, formatting and documentation, so what you're basically going to get is a completely reformatted version of the mods where it is visually much easier to find everything (separator lines, allcaps header lines etc) and where everything will use the same syntax. I already had complete readmes for most of the recent stuff, so this is basically just updating those.

I would also like it if we renamed the mod files a little bit, to be like "concept&lt;insert modname&gt;.dm", so it'll be easier to see which file you're dealing with. E.g. "conceptpretender.dm", "conceptspell.dm" etc. Right now it's "concept&lt;alphabetsoup&gt;.dm" and it's another thing that annoys the hell out of me.

The nation mod readme is going to take a file, so I'll post that separately, but everything else will be in the same package (mods, readmes, the graphics files etc).

The dwarf elder and the seraphs, I'll fix those. I would also like to see the Gryphon Rider (garnet amazon sacred unit) changed to be more like the black hunters of Machaka, i.e keep the original gold cost of 125 but make them stay as gryphons after the battle if the rider is killed. Otherwise even the cost reduction to 100 gold will make them too costly due to fragility because currently the gryphons disappear after battle (it's done with the #tmpsecondshape command instead of #secondshape). That's the only change I'm planning to the nation mod, and I think it might see the gryphon riders used a bit more.

By the way, the crystal amazons are not modified at all. Is this intentional?

Edi

[quantum_mechani]

On gryphon riders; keeping them after battle seems slightly unthematic, they are supposed to be very wild and independent. I have seen them used even at 125 gold when you simply need flyers, on the other hand I don't think having the gryphons stick around would necessarily be overpowered.

I didn't see any point in editing crystal amazons as they are not in the game other than as mercs or specifically placed in a scenario. I have no problem with you re-naming the files.

[Edi]

I'll see what to do with the gryphon riders. In any case, the pretender, spell and nation mods have been checked and fixed, and there are now complete readmes for pretenders, spells and scales.

I'll post the lot tomorrow or the day after, after I've cheked everything one more time.

It might also be a good idea to make a creature mod that incorporates all the changes to the summoned creatures that the spell mod does, but which leaves the spells themselves alone. It doesn't have a banner, unless someone wants to Photoshop one, but the mod file itself would be easy to do. That way you would have vanilla spells but modified creatures if you like the spell costs the way they are.

Edi

[quantum_mechani]

Edi said:

It might also be a good idea to make a creature mod that incorporates all the changes to the summoned creatures that the spell mod does, but which leaves the spells themselves alone. It doesn't have a banner, unless someone wants to Photoshop one, but the mod file itself would be easy to do. That way you would have vanilla spells but modified creatures if you like the spell costs the way they are.


Perhaps, though I think a better dividing line would be summons vs. spells. i.e., one mod modifies the cost and stats for summons, the other handles everything else.

[Turin]

Edi said:
The nation/hero mod also suffers from the following problem: For nations whose heroes differ from one theme to the next but retain the same name (specifically Pythium), the heroes for one theme have been modified, while the others have not. E.g. the Pythium hero who rides a serpent (Hierogallus the Hero) is modified for the basic theme (monster #506) but not for Serpent Cult (monster #866).

Edi



Ah that was my mistake. As far as I know hierogallus is the only hero though that changes between themes.

[Edi]

All right, as promised, the compilation package is ready.

It contains the following mods in their entirety (mod file, icon file and possible readme file):
Conceptual Balance Pretenders v2.51
Conceptual Balance Spells v2.01
Conceptual Balance Scales v1.3
Conceptual Balance Items v1.31
Conceptual Balance Nations v1.11
Conceptual Balance Complete 1.01

The package includes readmes for Pretenders, Spells, Scales and Items. Item readme is made by quantum_mechani, the other readmes were written by me. All mods have been renamed to the format of "conceptbalance_&lt;aspect&gt;_&lt;version number&gt;.dm" for improved recognition and clarity. Readme naming convention is identical, with the word "Readme" added.

The Nations mod does not have a readme yet, because that is such a massive undertaking to produce from scratch that it's going to take several days to complete at a minimum. If I keep getting one day employment gigs, it's going to take a lot longer, and then there are various things from Real Life that will inevitably keep me from the task at other times.

All mods have been synchronized to use the exact same syntax on weapon and armor modding, comment lines, structure and other aspects. Most have more or less improved readability. The spell mod especially has been extensively reformatted to make it more readable and easier to expand upon and maintain.

ALL mods have had the several metric tons of spelling errors in unit descriptions fixed, because they drive me into a murderous rage when I spot them in-game. And for further reference, Guard and guardian are spelled with UA, NOT AU. Next person who repeats that mistake in a mod I undertake to proofread/check for integrity should not be surprised to find me taking a fireaxe first to their doors and shortly after to their heads. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

The nations mod has had the following changes made to it:
The Hierogallus issue has been fixed.
Caelian seraphs now possess W1 (both standard and RotR)
Gryphon riders have reverted back to 125 gold, but turn to gryphons when the rider is killed (ala black hunter becoming a hunter spider). This makes them somewhat more useful and desirable, especially since they are fliers, but I am of the opinion that it in no way breaks the game and that the rarity of the garnet amazons combined with their cost makes it a non-issue.
Unit modding groups all indies together, so nations which have indie units on their rosters (specifically Arco and Man) only have national units unique to them listed under their headings and should refer to indie section for the other changes. Makes for a shorter and more logically organized mod structure.

The Pretender mod has had Dwarven Elder erased and the Ice Robe armor added.

The Item mod has not been tampered with apart from the syntax and structure, but is denoted as modified by increased version number nonetheless.

The Complete mod is a compilation of all of the single aspect component mods, and as such has some structural differences. Weapon and armor modding for standard armors and new armors has been moved to the beginning of the mod, right after scale modding. Duplicated effort from several mods (e.g. Pretenders and Spells) has been removed, there is only one set of equipment modding. Magic item stat modding is in its own section (the very last one) in the Item mod.

All of the Complete mod sections are identified with a large splashy header and have the version number of the individual component mod listed.

For any further development of the CB series, this set should be used as the basis to start from, both in naming convention and mod syntax, so that we will have a consistent set to play with.

That is all. Now hop to it and download the lot.

Edi

[Edi]

And I won't mind getting feedback from the modders and the people who use them either. Either by PM or by email [edirr(at)welho.com].

Edi

[Oversway]

This is great stuff, thanks to all who helped make them!

[Turin]

Since you didn´t change the item mod, here is a version without typos and better readability.

[Edi]

*bangs head against wall*

Turin, I specifically changes the formatting and readability, just didn't touch the modifications. That version you just did has nothing to offer and indeed has none of the syntax editing that the version in the package has. If you want to edit something, edit that one first, if indeed it has any typoes. Or I can do that and repost the whole package. I didn't just go through days of editing hell to have my hard work immediately torpedoed by introducing non-standard formatting!

Edi

[Turin]

well I made that one before you posted yours already and I didn´t really see any changes you made except making the headlines in big letters.

In my version I put the weapon changes under the corresponding artifacts, so you can see cost and weapon changes at the same time and fixed several item affecting typos(lightning spear, lucky coin, shield of the accursed, cauldron of broth, hydra skin armor) and removed lines that weren´t needed. I don´t know if that adds nothing

I really appreciate the work you did here and wouldn´t have posted it, but it seemed to me that you hadn´t done much with the item mod, so my fixed version could save some work. But I guess if the format is so important to you I should remove it.

[quantum_mechani]

Thanks a ton, Edi. Now, what program do you use to edit the mods? Otherwise, when I make a new version, we have to do this all over again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Edi]

Quantum:

I use Crimson Editor. You can find it here (http://www.crimsoneditor.com/). Completely free, very versatile and conforms to standards. Can be used for code developing for several programming languages (key word and structural color highlighting makes it easy to read code)and for basic text editing. It has very nifty search functions, search and replace, various text editing features such as case changing etc and Once I found this little program about three years ago, I have used it exclusively for basic text file editing.

--------------

Turin:

I specifically didn't do much structural changes for the item mod because I have not had time to get very familiar with it. Your approach, grouping weapon editing along with gem cost and path editing for items does have its merits (mainly convenience in maintaining that specific mod), but it also has its drawbacks (everything being mingled together).

The current format where the gem cost and path requirement edits are in one section and the actual equipment modding in another is in my opinion superior, because it allows other modmakers who might like the equipment changes but not the cost changes to copy the whole chunks to use as basis for their own mods (if they want just one or the otehr but not both). It would also be structurally consistent with the rest of the CB series. You can rest assured that when I do start going through it, things are going to get moved around pretty drastically. Basically you can expect stuff to be grouped by category (weapons, armor, miscellaneous) and level (trinket, lesser item, greater item, artefact) and possibly sorted by primary and secondary paths as well. Equipment modding would be in one section and the forging mods in another and both sections categorized as above.

I might actually do that before I do the Nations readme, just to get it out of the way.

If at all possible, I would like to retain editorial control of the format so that the rest of you can concentrate on content improvement. I can chime in on that as well, but not all that much.

Edi

[Turin]

I think my approach is definitely superior.
Which scenario is more likely: a would be modder considers the item mod and thinks: " I surely like the cost changes, but dislike all the weapon changes" , or him thinking " I mostly like the changes of this mod, but there are items x,y and z which I could mod better".

My approach is superior for the much more likely scenario 2.

Basically it boils down to this: my approach is better for the modder/ overall readability, your approach might be better for a modder who wants to throw out huge parts of the mod. As for structural consistency, it already is really annoying in the spell mod to check out the changes zen made to the units, which is one of the reason why I made a special blackunitview map for it.

I´ll happily let you retain the editorial control(not that I have anything to say in that matter as it´s primarily quantum´s /zen´s mod), but splitting the changes in several parts destroys the readability. Sorting the items by class is a really good idea though.

[Edi]

On reflection, I suppose that you're right in this instance. I'll make that change.

I'm going to put out a new version of the Item mod out later today, with the changes I outlined above. It's also going to be a Null Mod in the sense that I've added the #selectitem "&lt;item name&gt;" and #end lines for every single bleeding item that it is possible to build, categorized by type etc and all in the same construction levels and in the same order as they appear in the unmodded game.

Those should stay static, and changes in construction level should not cause them to move around, because otehrwise it is going to be a pain in the arse to try and find anything, especially if things change from version to version. The original author of the mod ought to be shot, it was impossible to find anything without scrolling through the whole file or using a search function.

There are also some item cost and level modifications that I personally violently disagree with, but we can talk about those later, I'm not going to meddle around with them now.

As for the spell mod, in that one the structure of speel edits in one section and unit edits in another is the only reasonable approach because the unit edits take up such a massive amount of space and the units are going to be edited very rarely compared to spell attributes. The readme should also help somewhat.

Another note on the spell mod: I didn't tinker with the contents, but Soul Gate Ermor had gotten quite the discount in its national spells, specifically the Wraith Consul and Senator. Never mind that they are immortal to begin with and also have unholy magic in spades, the consul now costs less to summon than a Wraith Centurion. That struck me as out of whack.

Edi

[Chazar]

Nice stuff! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

(BTW: You could shorten the nation mod by three lines, for the seraph gets his magical skills (2A,1W) deleted and replaced by (2A,1W).)

[Turin]

the wraith senator was pretty useless, because unholy 3 isn´t much of an improvement over unholy 2 priests(where you get a ton for free), basically it´s only useful for summoning apparitions, which you get for free anyway.

His major drawback is that he doesn´t come with any equipment, he doesn´t even have a real weapon, so a wraith centurion is the better choice for a fighter. Even at 11 gems I´d probably still summon exclusively centurions. He might have a niche if you want to equip him as a thug though, because his stats are marginally better than the centurions.

As for the wraith consul, I too thought they were fine at 35 gems, because lvl 4 unholy is actually useful and the better stats are nice as well.

[quantum_mechani]

Edi said:
On reflection, I suppose that you're right in this instance. I'll make that change.

I'm going to put out a new version of the Item mod out later today, with the changes I outlined above. It's also going to be a Null Mod in the sense that I've added the #selectitem "&lt;item name&gt;" and #end lines for every single bleeding item that it is possible to build, categorized by type etc and all in the same construction levels and in the same order as they appear in the unmodded game.

Those should stay static, and changes in construction level should not cause them to move around, because otehrwise it is going to be a pain in the arse to try and find anything, especially if things change from version to version. The original author of the mod ought to be shot, it was impossible to find anything without scrolling through the whole file or using a search function.

There are also some item cost and level modifications that I personally violently disagree with, but we can talk about those later, I'm not going to meddle around with them now.

As for the spell mod, in that one the structure of speel edits in one section and unit edits in another is the only reasonable approach because the unit edits take up such a massive amount of space and the units are going to be edited very rarely compared to spell attributes. The readme should also help somewhat.

Another note on the spell mod: I didn't tinker with the contents, but Soul Gate Ermor had gotten quite the discount in its national spells, specifically the Wraith Consul and Senator. Never mind that they are immortal to begin with and also have unholy magic in spades, the consul now costs less to summon than a Wraith Centurion. That struck me as out of whack.

Edi

Before you start re-organizing the item mod, here is a new version. Hopefully it fixes some of the things you violently disagree with. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I will be tinkering some more with the SG ermor part of the spell mod, I'm not totally happy with it myself.

[Edi]

Too late, but I'll take a look and just port those things into the reformatted item mod. Didn't quite manage to do that today, as the readme rewrite is going to take more time than I expected. I've got to say, the item mod so far has had hands down the ****tiest organization in general of all the CB mods (and the pretender one was a real pain in the arse in its first incarnation).

I'm thinking of bumping the version number to 1.45 or something when I'm done. Will be a ***** to go through all of that again, but I'll do that. Hold off on any more development of the item mod until I've got a good version and a readme out (one to three days, depending)

Oh, and you can toss these things to me by email, to the previously given address [edirr(at)welho.com] if you want to talk about just some minor tweaks.

And most of my violent objections are still in place, but they only concern a few items. Let's have an indepth discussion of that in a few days.

Edi

[quantum_mechani]

Oh, and BTW, one of your edits seems to have broken the nation mod, it now errors out whenever you have it enabled and try to do something.

[Edi]

Found it. Apparently the game still does not allow referencing armor by ID number, so I changed the lot of them back to referring by armor name and the problem vanished. The fixed Nations mod is attached.

Edi

[Edi]

All right, heads up!

The previous compilation of CB mods that I posted here had numerous problems:
The nations mod was broken due to errors on my part.
The item mod was full of typos, hence did not work as intended.
Spell mod had some issues with certain national spells.

This has all been fixed now. The itemmod has been gone over with a fine tooth comb, reorganized and all typos fixed. The nations mod has been improved upon, and there is a slightly newer version that also fixes some other (mainly Caelum) problems in v1.12.

So, I present, the Auigust 12, 2005 compilation of CB mods, including:
Scales 1.3 + readme
Pretenders 2.51 + readme
Spells 2.1 + readme
Items 1.45 + brand new readme
Nations 1.3 (sorry, no readme yet)
Complete 1.4

Enjoy.

Edi

[Aegis516]

where at? ***sorry NOOOB- god...(me) I want to die

[Truper]

In the header to the post. Where it says Attachment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[quantum_mechani]

Aegis516 said:
where at? ***sorry NOOOB- god...(me) I want to die


Sorry about the messy thread, you can now find the latest mods here (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=373674&amp;Main=373674#Post37 3674)